Old, tired Dell, I think w/prop. PSU

[Hondaman]

Got a 10-year old PC for repair. Dell Dimension 4100. 800MHz Pentium-3, 512 RAM (two 256 Meg PC-133 sticks), Lightscribe DVD-R, good caps.

But it's dead. And, I think, the famous Dell proprietary PSU (labeled "FOXCONN").

Got an error message "Load needed DLLs for Kernel" (and it would stop there) but after booting a few times, now it won't go past BIOS splash screen ("DELL" logo over a globe, with www.dell.com at the bottom, all in blue). Sometimes I can get into BIOS Setup.

Is there anything I should try after taking the CR2032 battery out for about 10 minutes? Caps are good (didn't look inside PSU though). Blow the dust out of the PSU maybe?

80-Gig IDE drive has about 22 Gigs of files on it. NTFS was shut down cleanly (if it had not been, linux would have complained when I tried to mount it).

Is there anything other than copying her docs and photos off the drive for posterity?

[PCBONEZ]

Re: Old, tired Dell, I think w/prop. PSU

Look inside the PSU.

[momaka]

Re: Old, tired Dell, I think w/prop. PSU

("DELL" logo over a globe, with www.dell.com at the bottom, all in blue). Sometimes I can get into BIOS Setup.

Is there anything I should try after taking the CR2032 battery out for about 10 minutes?

Not sure if this is the case here, but on the slightly older PII Dells such as the XPS R400 (which likely have a very similar BIOS, judging by the Dell-over-globe logo), if you take out the battery, the CMOS will default to normal POST rather than quick. This means the RAM will be checked byte-by-byte, which could take up to a minute (maybe even more?). You have 512 MB of RAM so give it a minute or two.
I can't remember if it was Del, Tab, or one of the F keys that you can press to view what POST is doing.

If not, then check PSU as BONEZ suggested (chances are, it's likely one of those Delta or Lite-ON units that are built like tanks with good Japanese caps).

Apart from that, the usual troubleshooting procedures still apply:
re-seat RAM, test with all drives removed, etc.

[Scenic]

Re: Old, tired Dell, I think w/prop. PSU

I can't remember if it was Del, Tab, or one of the F keys that you can press to view what POST is doing.

it's usually TAB .. but then again.. it's a dell

[Hondaman]

Re: Old, tired Dell, I think w/prop. PSU

Thank you all. There is a small dark area (glue?) near one diode. Other glue is still totally beige though. I blew the dust out of the PSU, and put it back together (I think I tried "load setup defaults" as well).

Takes 45 seconds or more to get to the "load DLLs for kernel" message, but it does this consistently. Owner says it was always this way.

So it looks like it was always this slow, and it's a software issue (owner says go ahead and reinstall XP from her CD, but I love a challenge). Don't know if I'll need a CD key. No rescue partition.

I can really see what the machine is doing during POST? Slow versus fast POST? I'll explore a bit more for curiosity (and learning).

Thanks!

[Uranium-235]

Re: Old, tired Dell, I think w/prop. PSU

take an xp disk and try a repair

also the hard drive might be going south, starting to get stuck/timeout on some areas of the drive, this can lead to lengthy bios detections in addition to missing files

if you have any other hard drives laying around, put it in and see if post takes this long. this could even be a bad ide cable

if you have an xp key from any other computer, just use that, microsoft activates all xp oem keys now a days as long as they're not known pirated

[momaka]

Re: Old, tired Dell, I think w/prop. PSU

it's usually TAB .. but then again.. it's a dell

Well, I had to safisfy my own curiousity there, so I pulled out my old trusty Dell Dimension XPS R400 out of the closet (and put Windows 2000 Professional on a 3.2 GB Quantum BigFoot 5.25" HDD just for fun ).
Scenic, you are right - it's a Dell, so it must be all weird. To see what POST is doing you need to hit the del key. Actually hitting del sends me into the BIOS, but if POST is doing a long check, hitting del allowed me to see what's happening during POST. Note: del key must be hit after Num Lock comes on (otherwise, this won't work).

I can really see what the machine is doing during POST? Slow versus fast POST?

Yes.
I'm not quite sure if the above will work for your Dell, since it's a PIII. But if your BIOS is anything like mine, you will have 6 tabs on the top - Main, Advanced, Security, Power, Boot, and Exit. Under the Boot tab, see if there is an option called Boot-Time Diagnostic Screen. If yes, make sure it's enabled. This will allow you to see what POST is doing without having to hit any keys.
Also under the Boot tab, you may find an option called QuickBoot Mode. If you do, enable it. This will skip the full checking of the RAM.
On my BIOS, both Boot-Time Diagnostic Screen and QuickBoot Mode are disabled by default (I know, because I keep the battery removed, and every time I plug in that computer, those options are reset).

As I was messing with my R400 today, I noticed that with 256 MB of RAM, it takes about 20 seconds for the computer to do a full RAM check, so it is possible that the 45 second wait you get is caused by this (since you have 512 MB or RAM).
Still, though, make sure the Boot-time Diagnostic Screen is enabled so you can see exactly on which part POST gets stuck on. It may be the RAM check, but it may also be a bad IDE cable or bad hard drive as Uranium-235 suggested.