I think your Thermal Paste on the CPU HeatSink might be dry. When this happens it like metal touching metal and the computer shorts out so it can't boot. You need to open the case and you will see 4 screws that hold the cpu heatsink on top of the processor chip. There are lots of videos on Youtube that show you how to replace the thermal paste (sometimes called thermal compound). I'm going to post a link here to one. I normally apply a thin coat of the paste all over the cpu and also on the heatsink. Then I put a coat of the paste in the middle of the cpu just like the video shows. This insures that I have coating all over the cpu and the cpu/heatsink. Don't worry as the video says about letting it dry. Put it on and turn your computer back on and start using it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQgCUcAAdac
How to Replace Thermal Compound
Hi, to release computer from standby mode, you could remove battery, put it again an turn on computer, Windows will show computer was not turned off correctly but now you can continue using it.
Unplug the unit from electricity, wash & dry your hands, take steps to avoid you transmitting static electricity(look it up if you are not familiar). There are several sheet metal screws around the edge in the back of your CPU. Remove the ones that appear to join the outer lip to the inner lip all the way around. The front & back should now separate into 2 pieces. One the shell & the other the bulk of the system. The hard drive is usually located on a standard mounting shelf by itself with 1 or 2 small screws holding it in on the side with 2 wire connections in the back. The larger is a ribbon cable the is used for data & the other is the power cable. pull out the cables, unscrew the screws & the hard drive slides out. Some boxes may have something that blocks your access to screws, if so, temporarily remove them so you can work. If you are not sure of a potential problem...take a smart phone picture so you can see how it goes back together.
Hello,
Please remove any and all USB devices, DVD/CD's, floppy disks from the PC then power it off completely and try to boot again. If it boots properly it simply means one of those devices is set to be bootable but isn't set up to boot your computer. To identify replace one at a time and reboot until the problem returns. Should removing all of them fail, chances are your windows drive has failed and needs to be replaced and re-installed with windows. Dell's generally arrive with a set of DVD's that can be used to set up a new drive, this will get you running again but you will need professional help if there was anything on the original drive that requires recovery.
Suggest you go to attatched link add check out the battery (XBT!) shown in the motherboard photo. A battery short can cause this and similar problems.
h20565 www2 hp com
The blinking light does indicate power problems here is the exact message: "The power supply is receiving power from the source but is unable to properly distribute it to the components." I would suggest pretty much the same thing. Remove any additional components you can, reboot and see if the problem still persists. If it does I would call back informing that with only the basic componets it still fails. If you are able to boot to windows go to system in the control panel and under the advanced tab unclick the option 'automatically restart on system failure' something to that affect. That would give you an error message that may diagnose the problem more specifically. You would have to verify with dell if you could get a larger power supply for that particular system.
The Gateway 818GM is a few years old but if - hopefully - the motherboard auto-detects a video card, try removing the MSI MS-8936 video card & swapping over the monitor lead to the other VGA connector fed from the motherboard.
Failing that, if you think it's a faulty video card, they're cheaply available on eBay eg for US$6.70 here:
MSI NVIDIA GeForce MX 4000 MS 8936 64 MB DDR SDRAM AGP 4x 8x Graphics
No bleeping sound? Then I would say that your RAM is no good.
If the coolers don't run I'm afraid that the processor is faulty.
Any more I cannot tell you right now, sorry.
Hey Brian,
Follow the information below to hopefully, resolve this error message.
Configure your PC to boot from CD if it isn't already set up that way. You may need to enter the BIOS to configure the PC to boot from the CD.
Set the boot order to
floppy (if present)
CD/DVDROM
Hard disk
SAVE and EXIT
Start your PC with the Setup CD in the drive. When you see the "Press any key to boot from CD..." prompt, do so and let the CD-based boot process begin.
When the Recovery Console option is offered (Press R to start the Recovery Console), do so. You may be asked which Windows installation to enter, in which case type the number of the Windows installation you wish to work on (usually 1).
When prompted, enter the Administrator's password for that Windows installation. If you did not set a password just press ENTER
At the command prompt, type
chkdsk /r (there is a space before the /)
Enter
Thank You,
Dell-Jesse L
Dell Social Media and Communities
Check your monitor cable first! Try reconnecting your display cable both at the computer and monitor ends. If it's still pink, try reinstalling the vga graphics driver from the Dell Utility CD-ROM (Or download from Dell's support site http://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/19/product-support/product/dimension-3100/drivers then select you PC model's video driver and re-install it. if after re-installing the video driver your display's still pink, try connecting to a different monitor - if a different monitor displays correctly, then its your monitor that's faulty. If it's pink on a different monitor too, then it's your PC video hardware that's got the problem - At least you'll know whether it's the monitor that's faulty or whether it's your computer's graphics hardware. (if your computer's video chip is faulty, then I suspect you'll need a replacement motherboard - $$$ - as I think the video is "on-chip" on the Dimension 3100 - so it may be time to consign it to the scrapheap and buy a new system if you can afford to)
HI,
There are a number of reasons this could be the case.
I am going to assume that the drive has power!? You can open and close the drive!? I am also going to assume that you can hear the drive running and you can see the green light flickering?
* is it just a single ROM that it wont read... but it will read everything else? Or will it not read any Disc?
Are you trying to read a normal DVD/CD Disc? Some drives will not read a burned disc, even when it was the same drive that burned it!
I wouldn't believe that either, except that I saw it with my own eyes just last week!
Sometimes it is just a loose cable inside the case. Simply removing the cover and reseating the cables to the drive and the motherboard will sometimes fix the issue. *be careful or get someone who knows what they are doing to do this!!!
Baring all that, it is of course possible that the drive has just burned out and is no longer capable of reading discs.
This is generally an indication of boot failure , often as a result of new hardware addition or new software installation. Try pressing the F8 key repeatedly (about once per second) while booting and boot in safe mode. If no success , try removing any hardware (especially flash drives) that was added since the last time the machine worked and try the above again
Make sure that there is no power failure during bios update and you have a power back up of atleast 10-15 minutes. Download the update from Dell's website and double click on the .exe program. Wait for program to finish the job.
