DellXPS 400 WinXP Pro won't boot

At startup get the following error messages:

can't find keyboard
can't find SATA 0 and SATA1 drives

have changed keyboard still have errors
any clues???

Hi!

can't find keyboard
can't find SATA 0 and SATA1 drives

Sounds bad for the motherboard. Have you tried unplugging the computer
from AC power for several minutes or even overnight?

You may have blown a protective fuse on the board, your power supply
may not be working properly (missing supply voltage) or the board may
have gone bad.

William

"William R. Walsh" wrote in message
...
Hi!

can't find keyboard
can't find SATA 0 and SATA1 drives

Sounds bad for the motherboard. Have you tried unplugging the computer
from AC power for several minutes or even overnight?
yes
You may have blown a protective fuse on the board, your power supply
may not be working properly (missing supply voltage) or the board may
have gone bad.

William

Thanks. I suspect Power Supply too. Computers been acting a little shaky the
last week or so. At least I haven't lost any data since I clone all drives
on a daily basis. I'll put it on the pile of things to look at. There are
enough other boxes around here that are working, so not really in a bind
right now.

"olfart" wrote in message ...
At startup get the following error messages:

can't find keyboard
can't find SATA 0 and SATA1 drives

have changed keyboard still have errors
any clues???

In my experience on at least three different machines spanning 10 odd years
"can't find keyboard" error messages have nothing to do with the keyboard,
or a loose keyboard connection. This seems to be a fallback error message
when all others are exhausted. Sometimes it's cured by a simple reboot.
Not sure about the SAT messages. If the CMOS screen appears then
maybe you could check the time to make sure the battery is O.K.

Here is the XPS 400 advanced diagnostics page.

http://support.dell.com/support/edoc....htm#wp1054146

with details of the diagnostic lights.


If you've got a DOS floppy I'd be tempted to try booting from that.

If the machine is processing error messages then that suggests
the problem isn't too drastic IMO. Possibly the Dell diagnostic page
may be able to help.


michael adams

....

"michael adams" wrote in message
...

"olfart" wrote in message
...
At startup get the following error messages:

can't find keyboard
can't find SATA 0 and SATA1 drives

have changed keyboard still have errors
any clues???

In my experience on at least three different machines spanning 10 odd
years
"can't find keyboard" error messages have nothing to do with the keyboard,
or a loose keyboard connection. This seems to be a fallback error message
when all others are exhausted. Sometimes it's cured by a simple reboot.
Not sure about the SAT messages. If the CMOS screen appears then
maybe you could check the time to make sure the battery is O.K.

Here is the XPS 400 advanced diagnostics page.

http://support.dell.com/support/edoc....htm#wp1054146

with details of the diagnostic lights.


If you've got a DOS floppy I'd be tempted to try booting from that.

If the machine is processing error messages then that suggests
the problem isn't too drastic IMO. Possibly the Dell diagnostic page
may be able to help.


michael adams

Thanks Mike
It seemed to be booting slower and slower for a few days before it quit.
I'll take a closer look when I get some time. Luckily I have seceral other
boxes in working order so I'm OK for now