dell optiplex GX1

[sweeper2]

I have a dell optiplex gx1, i took it home from my dads house where it worked fine. I took off front plate and side plate, put in a cd/rw and another slave HD and a soundblaster pci card. start up, lights come on, both cd and cd/rw light up and the HD makes a noise, then nothing, no monitor, can't get to bios etc. The cpu fan is blowing and the pwr supply has to work as it has pwer? I have gone through everything, even taking everything back out and putting it back to normal, still same thing? put in all new ide cables, checked everything for good seating etc. Any ideas anyone???

[John Prophet]

you sure it worked before?

[sweeper2]

yeah, i ran it this weekend updating my for sale thread here. I turned it off from windows 98, it shut down, took it home, hooked up another HD as slave, hooked up cd/rw and sound card which i know worked because it worked on my parted out system, plugged it in and it came on and just sat there... no monitor and no boot up? Doesn't make sense.

[John Prophet]

and u took the new stuff back out and now it wont boot to video??

have you tried to reset the bios? I am not sure if they have a reset jumper..I have built many GX1's but dont recall ever resetting a bios...maybe have to just take out the battery for a while

[sweeper2]

well, i wiggle a jumper down on bottom of MB, ghz setting i think, then it started...but didn't pick up the other HD, and the new cd-rw is not working correctly, so i will work for awhile on it and see what happens. THanks..

[John Prophet]

95% of the time those are jumper issues..jumpers on the hard drive and cdrw must agree with the existing jumper settings on the other hard drives etc...one must be master and the other slave etc...or set em all to cable select.

then of course turn stuff on in the bios

[sweeper2]

ok, i know i posted that it worked, well, it did until i got my new system up and running(well used, but new to me). Now I was going to give it to my daughter as it is faster then her old one, so i added another HD as a slave, put in another stick of ram(which i know works, because i pulled from another working system). Now just wants to goto the menu where you can boot from restore or normal or safe mode etc. but when i try each one, it locks up...i pulled the ram, same thing, pulled the extra HD , same thing, now all it does is the boot up screen comes on and then just a blinking curser.....................................this system stinks as to try and do anytype of upgrading to it, for that matter touch it...LOL Any ideas now?????


Dell Optiplex Gx1
450 mhz PIII

[John Prophet]

what r u doing to that comp?????

lol..get it running and quit adding stuff!!!

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hmm, maybe try to reset bios again

or try booting to a w98se floppy and do "fdisk /mbr"

[sweeper2]

well i put win xp on it and got it all up and running for a few days, but wanted my daughter to have a faster one, so i gave it to her, but man, every time i touch the thing it goes haywire!!!, i might try and get into the bios and set it for cd-rom bootup and try a repair or something, but i think it is a hardware issue, but not sure where to keep looking as i have taken the battery out about 10 times reseting the bios, it goes to setup, i reset everything, it goes to startup screen (the DELL startup, not the win xp), then goes to a black screen and a blinking curser.... ...i am lost ....

[osprey4]

What kind of RAM did you put in? I think that system has a 100 MHz bus so if you mixed 100 and 133 RAM, you must put the slower RAM in the first slot. In fact, it may not work with some 133 RAM.

My daughter is using my old Optiplex GXa with 98 and it runs fine, albeit a bit slow.