Dell 9100 freezing up on startup some times other times i can get to the net bef

[laptop dummy]

my dell 9100 laptop will some times boot and work fine for a while but allways freezes. Making a hard power down the only way out. other times it will not even sound like it tries it just flash all the green lights by the power button and does nothing. most the time it does the light thing only.It was working great for a real long time woke up one morning and this started. any suggestions?some have said its a power supply problem with the mother board others say hard drive.

 

[windryyder]

Hi,

Most dells either come with a diagnostics CD or have a diagnostics partition on the hard drive. When you power on the laptop keep tapping the f12 button until you get the one time boot menu to come up. From there, choose the option to boot to utility partition or if you have the cd, boot to the cd. Then follow the onscreen instructions. The test should give you the option to test the ram first, which I would do because ram can cause random lockups, blue screens, and reboots. Then after the ram test, try running the express test in the software and then the full test if you still do not find any errors. You can download the utility as well if you need it from support.dell.com

 

[delluser1]

my dell 9100 laptop will some times boot and work fine for a while but allways freezes. Making a hard power down the only way out. other times it will not even sound like it tries it just flash all the green lights by the power button and does nothing. most the time it does the light thing only.It was working great for a real long time woke up one morning and this started. any suggestions?some have said its a power supply problem with the mother board others say hard drive.

In my experience the "others" are right.
My I9100 still work's fine , replaced the original HD a couple of years ago.
Found my HP locked up ( again ) just about an hour ago, I had replaced it's HD about 6 months ago when it displayed the same symptoms, not happy.

 

[laptop dummy]

Hi,

Most dells either come with a diagnostics CD or have a diagnostics partition on the hard drive. When you power on the laptop keep tapping the f12 button until you get the one time boot menu to come up. From there, choose the option to boot to utility partition or if you have the cd, boot to the cd. Then follow the onscreen instructions. The test should give you the option to test the ram first, which I would do because ram can cause random lockups, blue screens, and reboots. Then after the ram test, try running the express test in the software and then the full test if you still do not find any errors. You can download the utility as well if you need it from support.dell.com

Hi,got it to boot and done F12... got to bios page where it wants date and time info. and froze up on that page with it showing.It would'nt do any thing else.Powered down and on reboot would not do any thing but flash the three green lights and do nothing.Will a laptop boot or do anything with the HD removed?

 

[windryyder]

Hi,

If you take out the hard drive and have no other bootable media such as a cd/dvd you should get a message saying something like non system disk or no boot device. If you have a bootable cd or usb, you can boot to one of those even without a harddrive in the laptop. I have seen Dell's freeze up at the POST screen because of a hard drive. In those situations, I have just swapped out the drive and was then able to boot normally. You may want to try reseating the RAM in your laptop in case it is not seated correctly in the RAM slot to see if it helps with the lockups. Also, ususally the flashing lights on the dell mean something, they are like beep codes -- i think the caps lock key, number lock, and scroll lock lights near the power button. When you try to boot and these lights come up, make a note of which ones light up and if they are solid or flashing. You should then be able to look up those lights on Dell website to get a better idea of what the problem is.