AboutMike Expertise Areas of expertise: PC Hardware, Peripherals, Barcode Scanners, Printers, and Applications, Basic Networking, Microsoft Applications. I am good at researching issues and have a lot of contacts. So if I can't directly answer a question I can likely find the answer.
Areas I won't be much help in: Apple Computers, Linux, older Networking topologies like Token Ring.
Experience I'm currently an IT Support Technician for a contract circuit
board manufacturer in Oregon, USA. I've been working on PCs from a hobby standpoint for better than 25 years. I've been doing it professionally for 3 years.
Expert: Mike Date: 6/27/2008 Subject: Dell Dimension 3100
Question I have a friend who manages an apartment complex that has a Dell Dimension 3100 running a program that opens and closes the entry gate.
The PC does not boot all the way, it only gets to a black screen where it asks for a password. She says that she cannot get to the BIOS, I'm not sure if she knows how to get into the BIOS. I told her I would go out there tomorrow morning to give her a hand so I'm trying to find out any possible solutions before I get there.
Do you have any ideas or thoughts as to what the problem is and/or what I can try to fix it?
Thank you,
Landon
Answer The best I can offer without a lot more details is an educated guess. Which is that it sounds like the BIOS Boot Password has somehow gotten set on that computer so it won't even reboot without the password being entered.
The first thing I'd try when you look at that computer is to pull the power cord, then remove the battery off the motherboard and just let it sit for 10-15 minutes to drain the onboard capacitors.
This will essentially lobotomize the pc and force the BIOS back into it's factory defaults and should wipe that password in the process.
Another thing to check is the service manual for that thing, which you can view here:
That computer has a series of LED lights on the back, with different patterns that mean different things. There are also the usual series of beep codes it can give off. Both of these can help lead to a possible cause for the problem if resetting the BIOS doesn't help.
Make sure to check out the Advanced Troubleshooting section of the above manual for the beep codes and LED combinations.
If you need any more help after you've taken a look at it, feel free to drop me another note.
