Computer Issues

You know, sometimes you get a really good computer system from a company and sometimes you get a rotten lemon. I believe I purchased the latter in February of 2006 when I got one of those “cool” new Dell XPS 600 machines. I’ve had issues with it from the start, including Blue Screen of Death crashes. It took a long time (longer than it should because I’m lazy) but eventually I got it resolved.

Earlier tonight, my UPS started making funny clicking noises and then started screaming about the battery. Nice. Either my battery is going dead or something weird just happened. Still, the only way to clear the error light and potential new alarm screams was to shut down my system and then shut the UPS off for a bit. So I did this.

The UPS came up with no problems but I haven’t been able to get the PC past the BIOS check. I’ve seen it struggle in the past after being powered off, but unplugging USB devices seemed to get it over the hump. Once my machine is up, it keeps running as I constantly have it doing something, at minimum that would be SETI processing and/or uTorrent workings.

So, I unplugged the USB devices and there was no help. I continued trying to bring the bloody thing up but it won’t get past the BIOS check and stops at the same point.

As a result, I’m now on the phone with Dell Support…or rather I’m on hold. You just have to love technology that goes wrong. Well, as long as the hard drives are OK, I’m fine. I can always replace other parts.

In the meantime, I’m killing time on my old system (that was “rebuilt” after I bought the newer machine). It usually just does SETI stuff, but it’s in another room so I do use it for other things when I’m in that part of the apartment. It is also a Dell machine, but I never had any problems with it beyond it beyond its age. Thus I have a great Dell machine and a crappy Dell machine.

Update: Its the motherboard. New one should arrive late Tuesday.

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