| Author |
Message |
Mark B in Derby
| | Posted on Friday, September 22, 2006 - 6:26 am: | |
I could do with some help! I have posted here, rather in in the Memory thread, because I believe the problems stems from the BIOS. In the DELL BIOS or MASTERPASSWORD thread, from A non (not Anon) on September 19th 2005 is exactly my problem. Three days later is a report that help from P_U sorted it, but no explanation. If anyone knows a solution I would be grateful - thanks in anticipation. So here is the problem...
Dell Inspiron 5100 notebook with a history. Arrived brand new and, after a while, the backslash key didn't work. Never got around to getting it sorted under warranty and lived with it. Recently, the USB slots stopped recognising devices being plugged in, then it wouldn't boot at all, with a memory problem indicated - not 100% sure, but think Num and Caps Lock flashing together. Of course, 2 months out of warranty by then :-)
Sent for repair, comes back fixed, except for backslash key. They advised updating BIOS - not a common fault they have seen on this model, but apparently quite common on others. BIOS was something like A01 so downloaded A32 from Dell site and flashed OK, although had to go via an intermediate version rather than all in one go. Everything looked rosy so started getting ready to reallocate to a user, including setting BIOS passwords.
It seems that one of the BIOS flashing sessions cleared the Service Tag and you can't set a BIOS password without it. Thanks to Google and this site, found SVCTAG.EXE, tried it and offered a silent prayer when it worked. But then we rebooted and got the POST expecting memory that it didn't think was there and resetting expected down to 256Mb - the laptop actually has 2 x 256.
Took one out and found 256Mb. Took the other out and found none, but then tried in Slot A, etc. Short story is that both chips work, but nothing in Slot B is detected.
Unless this is one very unhappy timing coincidence, I strongly suspect that updating the BIOS or using SVCTAG has had an impact. Tried the BIOS flash again, just in case, but made no difference. Any ideas, anyone?
Again, thanks in anticipation!
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