Dell Dimension XPS R400 screen problem

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mikehende

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Apr 5, 2005
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I have 2 old Dell Dimension XPS R400 desktops of which I am trying to make 1 out of the 2, when I boot up 1 of them [I will call this one pc 2], I don't get anything on the monitor and there aren't any beeps present. Any ideas what I should do from here please? Thanks.
p.s. I switched the graphics cards from both pcs, still no screen on pc 2 and pc 2's card works on pc 1,is the motherboard fried on pc 2?
 
It could be any number of thing. Could be bad ram, motherboard, cable.
I would add one part at a time until you get a working system.
 
Shouldn't there be some way to "trace" this problem like when using a schematic or following and changing everything that has to do "only" with the signal going to the monitor? I can't believe that you would have to change everything in sight to find the problem?
 
The problem is that any component that has anything to do with booting could be bad. If the memory is bad no video. If the processor is bad no video.
It more than like is one of those things or the video card. The only way to know for sure is to change each part with known working parts.
 
The Video card and memory is good so I have to believe that it is the MB and that's what Dell told me last night. Thing is, how often does someone have the luxury of having duplicate parts or identical pc's to switch and test? There should be some tool that a person can use to test each part of a pc?
 
I have a tool that plugs into serial port and does diagnostics on the motherboard. I bought it at computer show a couple years ago. It does help to find problems with the motherboard. I don't know of any other diagnostic tools except for the ones that cost 1000 of dollars.
Almost everyone that builds computers or tinkers inside a computer has spares of everything. I have processors, memory video cards, motherboards and whole bunch of other hardware. I can swap out parts to find whats broken easily.
Unless you spend a ton of money there is no other way to find what's broke unless you swap out parts.
 
After having fixed pc's for some time then I can understand a tech having spares to switch but what would a "new" tech do when someone brings a pc to him and he doesn't have these spares or if he has to fix at that person's home:confused: ?
 
I usually have enough spare parts around to create a running machine, but as of late, all I have been using is Socket 939 stuff so basically all I have for now to test with is spare memory and older socket A components. I plan on getting a cheap socket 939 chip just for testing.. Other then that, I prefer to buy MSI motherboards that have the D-LED technology that tells you what is probably wrong without having to buy a serial port device to test it.

On YOUR machine, you should be able to swap out CPU's too without any probs.

One thing I am wondering is if you are getting any beeps from the board. If you DO get a beep then the CPU is just fine and can be ruled out.
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No beeps and yes, I have switched MB's so I am pretty certain that the MB is gone on pc 2. I just need to know how I could have tested these parts if I did not have another indentical pc to swap parts? Also, you mentioned about the MSI Motherboard, my research does not say much about it, do you use this for testing Motherboards? How does it work?
 
The pc does not recognise the drive and I get this prompt

"No operating system found"

I wish to use a floppy to load an anti-virus program to see if the bios was infected but how can I load an av program on 1.44 floppy disk?
 
Make sure that bios is set to boot from the the hard drive. The boot order should be, cdrom > hd > floppy. Also make sure that the drive is seen by the bios.

I doubt that your bios is infected by a virus. The last virus to do that was Chernoble aka win95.cih and even it only infected older motherboards. I mean older at the time the virus was released to the wild which was in 1996 or so.
As far as I know the only way to boot from floppy with a virus scanner is if you created the floppies on the system you want to scan.
 
Problem here Bob, is that I tried "2" working hd's and when both were place back into their pc's I now get the same thing, the pc does not recognise both hd's, see why I have to believe now that the bios is infected? Your explanation suggests why the boot disks I created would not work but is there anyhting else I can try here seeing that I do not have another hd to try?
 
Let me ask another question, since I am taking a working HD out of a completely different pc with a different OS, do I have to change any settings or anything whether Bios or not "before" connecting the foreign HD to the other pc or can you simply switch or interchange HD's at will?
 
mikehende said:
Let me ask another question, since I am taking a working HD out of a completely different pc with a different OS, do I have to change any settings or anything whether Bios or not "before" connecting the foreign HD to the other pc or can you simply switch or interchange HD's at will?
Click to expand...
Absolutely. You have remove the drivers for your devices before you move the drive to another box using device manager. Sometimes this is successful, sometimes not. Remove the disk controller, graphics and sound drivers at minimum.
 
well the problem I am facing here does not allow me to get to the Device Manager. Made a little progress, changed the IDE cable and now the pc recognizes the hard drives as I can see them listed in both POST and Bios, problem now is that after the POST I see the windows start up led going from left to right at the bottom of the screen but then I get a flash of a screen which appears to have some error messages but it doesn't stay on long enough for me to read what's on that page or screen, then the pc reboots itself repeatedly unless I manually shut it down, any ideas/fixes?
 
I have no choice but to throw out this pc now as I don't if anything can be done but I would like to ask this question just for the knowledge and would appreciate an answer.

Whenever you come across a pc that needs repairing and since most sources say that in order for a Boot disk to be successful, it has to be made on the pc itself, is there anything you can do or do you simply condemn it? If so, then what would be the purpose of a site like Bootdisk.com if the disk has to be made on the pc in question? Doesn't make any sense at all to me, can anyone explain this please?
 
I don't understand why you have to throw it out. Install a clean copy of XP or win98 or Win 2000. You can move disks from one box to another. Most of the time with OS still installed if you prepped it before hand. Removed the devices before you shutdown the old box.
If you can't get an OS to install fresh then it is possible the disk is bad. Put another disk in and install.
If I understand you the computer boots past bios, but, doesn't boot to oS because the disk and OS was installed on another box. This does happen. Wipe the drive and start fresh.
If you want to throw away that box then I'll give you my address and send you shipping cost and you can ship it to me.
 
Got it to go to windows, this hard drive has win 95 on it and the mouse does not work, I want to install win 98, how can I know if the bios needs to be updated?
 

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