Here's one I haven't seen...

[Grinder]

I have a Dell Vostro 230 desktop computer, that freezes on boot. That
is, it just stops dead in its tracks, fans still running, and the image
still on the screen. It is at a pretty regular spot in the boot
process, after POSTing, and early in the OS's wind up.

It's the same for whatever operating system, I try on CD, or off of the
hard drive. The repair process freezes up, always an an early stage of
the game.

I have disconnected or replaced RAM, power supply, hard drive, optical
drive, and CMOS battery, but always get the same response. I pulled the
CPU cooler to take a look and re-pasted it--same result.

I guess it pretty much has to be the motherboard or the CPU, but wtf?

[Paul]

Post by Grinder
I have a Dell Vostro 230 desktop computer, that freezes on boot. That
is, it just stops dead in its tracks, fans still running, and the image
still on the screen. It is at a pretty regular spot in the boot
process, after POSTing, and early in the OS's wind up.
It's the same for whatever operating system, I try on CD, or off of the
hard drive. The repair process freezes up, always an an early stage of
the game.
I have disconnected or replaced RAM, power supply, hard drive, optical
drive, and CMOS battery, but always get the same response. I pulled the
CPU cooler to take a look and re-pasted it--same result.
I guess it pretty much has to be the motherboard or the CPU, but wtf?

Just out of curiosity, I notice in an Ebay listing
it's a Core2 board, and likely intended for a 65W
processor or less. It has three phase power, which
is kinda stingy. (You can do it with less, and my
old 65W AthlonXP board did it with just two monster phases,
but that's not how Intel boards typically do it.)
So the number of phases is rather limited, and inserting
a quad core as an upgrade could cook it.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Genuine-Dell-Vostro-230-230s-Mini-Tower-DDR3-Intel-Motherboard-7N90W-/181419102474?pt=Motherboards&hash=item2a3d6bd10a

As a low-power board, make sure some well-intentioned
user hasn't upgraded it to a "cook itself" state. The
Vcore converter could be latching off, while the
rest of the power remains.

It's also got a very weird mix of Polymer and electrolytic
capacitors. Maybe they were trying to use electrolytics
in non-critical things, but the assignment of type
still looks a bit random to me. Not an encouraging sign.
Usually when boards mix those, there are visible "rules"
at work as to what type goes where. For example, for
bulk decoupling, like near a PCI Express slot, those
can be electrolytics. Because if they pop, you'd never
notice. And Dell used Polymer ones for that. Makes no
sense, if you're shaving nickels and dimes off the
manufacturing cost. The electrolytics were the ones
with the leakage problem years ago.

Paul

[Grinder]

Post by Grinder
I have a Dell Vostro 230 desktop computer, that freezes on boot. That
is, it just stops dead in its tracks, fans still running, and the image
still on the screen. It is at a pretty regular spot in the boot
process, after POSTing, and early in the OS's wind up.
It's the same for whatever operating system, I try on CD, or off of the
hard drive. The repair process freezes up, always an an early stage of
the game.
I have disconnected or replaced RAM, power supply, hard drive, optical
drive, and CMOS battery, but always get the same response. I pulled the
CPU cooler to take a look and re-pasted it--same result.
I guess it pretty much has to be the motherboard or the CPU, but wtf?

Apparently, the onboard NIC has failed in a manner than freezes up the
boot. Disabling it in BIOS has skirted that problem.

[Paul]

Post by Grinder

Post by Grinder
I have a Dell Vostro 230 desktop computer, that freezes on boot. That
is, it just stops dead in its tracks, fans still running, and the image
still on the screen. It is at a pretty regular spot in the boot
process, after POSTing, and early in the OS's wind up.
It's the same for whatever operating system, I try on CD, or off of the
hard drive. The repair process freezes up, always an an early stage of
the game.
I have disconnected or replaced RAM, power supply, hard drive, optical
drive, and CMOS battery, but always get the same response. I pulled the
CPU cooler to take a look and re-pasted it--same result.
I guess it pretty much has to be the motherboard or the CPU, but wtf?

Apparently, the onboard NIC has failed in a manner than freezes up the
boot. Disabling it in BIOS has skirted that problem.

Interrupt storm ?

Probably hard to check for that, if it will no longer boot :-)

While I would probably have started pulling excess cards
out of the thing, I don't know if the symptoms would
have me disabling peripherals in the BIOS. I'd have
missed that. Good catch.

You might run the part number of the NIC, and see
if it's known for this form of failure.

Paul

[Grinder]

Post by Paul

Post by Grinder

Post by Grinder
I have a Dell Vostro 230 desktop computer, that freezes on boot. That
is, it just stops dead in its tracks, fans still running, and the image
still on the screen. It is at a pretty regular spot in the boot
process, after POSTing, and early in the OS's wind up.
It's the same for whatever operating system, I try on CD, or off of the
hard drive. The repair process freezes up, always an an early stage of
the game.
I have disconnected or replaced RAM, power supply, hard drive, optical
drive, and CMOS battery, but always get the same response. I pulled the
CPU cooler to take a look and re-pasted it--same result.
I guess it pretty much has to be the motherboard or the CPU, but wtf?

Apparently, the onboard NIC has failed in a manner than freezes up the
boot. Disabling it in BIOS has skirted that problem.

Interrupt storm ?
Probably hard to check for that, if it will no longer boot :-)
While I would probably have started pulling excess cards
out of the thing, I don't know if the symptoms would
have me disabling peripherals in the BIOS. I'd have
missed that. Good catch.
You might run the part number of the NIC, and see
if it's known for this form of failure.

It looks like that particular model of Dell does seem to have a problem
with freezing between POSTing and booting.

[Paul]

Post by Grinder

Post by Paul
You might run the part number of the NIC, and see
if it's known for this form of failure.

It looks like that particular model of Dell does seem to have a problem
with freezing between POSTing and booting.

It looks like some other models of Dell use
the Broadcom 57788 as well.

You would think these freezes would have
been caught in testing.

Paul