Ok, here is a really big problem... i have a dell 5150 with a dell motherboard updated bios a western digital 1600 hDD and a 300W Psu. The problem is that one day i turned on the computer and there was blue lines in the bios screen, then it went to a black screen with lines of "a" and it tells me that there was no bootable drives. I tried to boot from the windows XP cd but it brings me to the blue screen, loaded the program and jamed at "starting windows". I tried to flash the bios and it works i have the A07 version but it didn't solve the problem. Then i unpluged the HDD and the A:\ but it didn't resolve anything.I personnaly think that its a motherboard issue but maybe there is another solution to this mess.

thx in advance

P.S. I can boot only from floppy drive...

First thing i would do is crack the box open and inspect the system board.

1. Examine the board searching for enlarged or leaking capacitors.

Not sure what a capacitor is........here's a link and what to look for

Capacitors: Not Just For Abit Owners

If you find any capacitors that are failing. It's a pretty cut and dry deal you know the board is bad and can either have the board repaired by replacing all capacitors with new ones or replace the system board all together.

I for one do not know what it would cost to repair it versus replacing the board. I'll leave that up to you.

Take a look and report back with your findings.

I looked for capacitor that fails but i didn't find any. I do think it can be the chipset or something like this if it's not the capacitors... however, i don't know exactly where it is on the board...(i tried plug and unplug all the things in the computer but all seems to work fine..i don't really want to try the drive on my other computer because the people who have it had a lot of viruses and thing like that... i was wondering if it can affect my good computer to plug the HDD in...?


thx

Try this...Get into the BIOS and make sure the Caps Lock, Scroll Lock, and Number Lock are all lit. Next hold ctrl, alt, and shift, and then press (in order) F, E, B.

This will force your mobo to reinitialize the IDE channels.

P.S. This will only work on Dell's

Am I the only one who looked at the title of this thread and thought "Yup, that about sums it up!"

Sounds like a failing mobo to me (leaking/enlarged caps are not the only cause for a failing mobo) so if it's under warranty try getting Dell to repair it; if it's not under warranty, build yourself something respectable, if you feel capable, or buy an HP.

i built a couple of costum computer myself but this is more a mather of money... because personaly i really think the md is broken. I tried a lot of things to fix it or at least get rid of these "a" or blue lines. I noticed that there is two beeps when i light it up... anyone knows what it means?? I don't think there is a md site where i can find information on this...

thx for help

I mean Mb and not md*...

This might help.......

http://support.dell.com/support/edoc....htm#wp1122017

thx, i already fix one problem(video card) wich was and offboard video card... i removed the cap on the onbeard card and plug it in... no more blue lines.... one down.. one to go. Now i think the HDD is the problem, it says no boot devices available.. so i'll test de HDD to see if its this or the MB thats failling.


thx for help