older laptop problem

[jayno20]

I am working on an older Dell Latitude CPi A-Series, and when i boot it up, it sits at a completely black screen with no hard drive activity at all for about 2 or 3 minutes then it boots to windows just fine, there are no errors in the event viewer and after the computer boots it acts like nothing is wrong... i only have an antivirus set to load with windows, i checked for viruses/spyware, any ideas what is causing this?

 

[Ididmyc600]

I am working on an older Dell Latitude CPi A-Series, and when i boot it up, it sits at a completely black screen with no hard drive activity at all for about 2 or 3 minutes then it boots to windows just fine, there are no errors in the event viewer and after the computer boots it acts like nothing is wrong... i only have an antivirus set to load with windows, i checked for viruses/spyware, any ideas what is causing this?

Hi

Sounds like the laptop is looking for another bootable device when you start it up, or its an issue with the hardware itself, you could always do a clean install of the OS and see if the problem occurs again, a bit extreme I know.

For testing laptops I have a spare drive with a basic Win98 image on it, If I think the OS is the trouble I stick that in and see if the fault occurs.

Regards

 

[Janes]

Just a random shot, how much RAM have you got in?
Maybe it just takes long to do the POST memory test?

 

[jayno20]

its 128mb of ram, i have it set to just look for the HD on startup.. i really cant do a reinstall cause i dont have the cd key anymore.

 

[Ididmyc600]

Yes you can, download Jellybean magic key finder, it will give you your windows key, make a note of it and then reinstall, make sure you have all the needed drivers and your data is backed up.

Regards

 

[jayno20]

is there nothing else i can try before reinstalling windows?

 

[jayno20]

anyone have any ideas?

 

[Ididmyc600]

Hi

Nope !!

Sorry

Regards