strange (grub?) problem after poweron laptop

[Marc Schwartz]

On Mon, 2004-03-22 at 09:57, jludwig wrote:
> This is a hardware problem since yoe are not even reaching the hard
> drive, much less GRUB. This could be a connection, the hard drive, the
> PCI chip, BIOS, or even a failing cdrom pulling down the bus.
> But not GRUB or any other software.


One of the other things that come to mind here, since the problem is
intermittent, is that the reserve battery may be dead or dying.  As with
desktops, there is an onboard battery that is used to retain the BIOS
system configuration when the system is turned off and/or the laptop
batteries are low or removed.

If the reserve battery is dying, you may have intermittent system
problems because the BIOS will fail to properly retain the laptop's HW
configuration.

You might want to review the Dell documentation here:

http://docs.us.dell.com/docs/systems/ins8200/en/sm_en/resbatt.htm#1084976

If this is the problem, you will need to order a replacement from Dell.

HTH,

Marc Schwartz