[Andre De Clercq]

I have 2 (older) PC's, a Dell Lattitude and a Packard Bell both running well
on XP SP2. Startup however sometimes fails: the PC's sometimes just stop
while starting up or sometimes shut down without any audio or screen message
in both cases. Sometimes while loading XP, the portable also gets locked.
Power has to be removed to solve the problem. All tests (when they work)
seem to be OK also the memtest. Never got a problem with "restart". Is this
behaviour known by the experts...Probably not a windows problem? Thanks for
any advise

[Malke]

Andre De Clercq wrote:

> I have 2 (older) PC's, a Dell Lattitude and a Packard Bell both
> running well on XP SP2. Startup however sometimes fails: the PC's
> sometimes just stop while starting up or sometimes shut down without
> any audio or screen message in both cases. Sometimes while loading XP,
> the portable also gets locked. Power has to be removed to solve the
> problem. All tests (when they work) seem to be OK also the memtest.
> Never got a problem with "restart". Is this
> behaviour known by the experts...Probably not a windows problem?
> Thanks for any advise

No, this is probably not a Windows problem. It sounds more like the
classic case of failing power supply. Try swapping out with a
known-working psu for the Packard Bell if it is a desktop. Obviously,
you won't be able to do this on your Latitude. If it is a really old
Latitude, you're probably out of luck and/or it would be more expensive
to fix it than to just get a new laptop. If the laptop isn't that old,
contact Dell tech support or take it to a local computer repair shop
that works on laptops.

Malke
--
Elephant Boy Computers
www.elephantboycomputers.com
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MS-MVP Windows - Shell/User