Hi all. Firstly, this isn't a problem with my computer, but rather with a client's computer that was brought in. First, some pictures that literally dropped my jaw when I opened the case (sorry for the crappy res, but I took it with my phone):
(yes I did clean it out...no way was I gonna rummage around inside of THAT thing)
And when I was blowing it out...when I was blowing out the HDD cage vent that's on the front of the machine, under the front panel...a ball of dust came out, that had to be at least 2.5" in diameter...I don't think this thing has seen any fresh air at all for years >.<
Now then.. to the problem xD... First, specs:
Dell Dimension 2400
Celeron 2.0GHz
128MB DDR-333
XP Home
(not sure how big) Western Digital HDD
Ok, this is what it does:
Upon booting, it just sits there at the XP Home Loading screen, scrolling the green "loading bar," and occasionally hanging for second, then start scrolling again. I left it there for about 10 minutes or so, and it still did not want to boot. I tried to boot into Safe Mode, and it loads all the way up to \system32\drivers\mup.sys, then just sits there.
All of the fans spin, and the LED on the mobo lights up, so I don't think it's the PSU. Tried to swap the single RAM chip to the other slot, which didn't help either (I'm going to try to run Memtest86 tomorrow when I go back to work to see if it's bad RAM). I also tried clearing CMOS, but that did not work either. I'm assuming that it's a corrupt system file, so I may have to try to contact the person/see if they still have their OS install disc, and do a repair install (I'll attempt to slave the drive in another computer/backup their data files before I do this first, however).
Anybody else have any other ideas I could try on this computer?
(yes I did clean it out...no way was I gonna rummage around inside of THAT thing)
And when I was blowing it out...when I was blowing out the HDD cage vent that's on the front of the machine, under the front panel...a ball of dust came out, that had to be at least 2.5" in diameter...I don't think this thing has seen any fresh air at all for years >.<
Now then.. to the problem xD... First, specs:
Dell Dimension 2400
Celeron 2.0GHz
128MB DDR-333
XP Home
(not sure how big) Western Digital HDD
Ok, this is what it does:
Upon booting, it just sits there at the XP Home Loading screen, scrolling the green "loading bar," and occasionally hanging for second, then start scrolling again. I left it there for about 10 minutes or so, and it still did not want to boot. I tried to boot into Safe Mode, and it loads all the way up to \system32\drivers\mup.sys, then just sits there.
All of the fans spin, and the LED on the mobo lights up, so I don't think it's the PSU. Tried to swap the single RAM chip to the other slot, which didn't help either (I'm going to try to run Memtest86 tomorrow when I go back to work to see if it's bad RAM). I also tried clearing CMOS, but that did not work either. I'm assuming that it's a corrupt system file, so I may have to try to contact the person/see if they still have their OS install disc, and do a repair install (I'll attempt to slave the drive in another computer/backup their data files before I do this first, however).
Anybody else have any other ideas I could try on this computer?
