- My Satellite Setup
- Has gone to a good home elsewhere
- My Location
- Blackburn, Lancashire
There is a Dimension 5150 running XP SP3 where I occasionally do a few hours of IT support work, the PC has functioned very well for about 5 years. I was called in to have a look at it initially a few months ago and had to change the Cmos battery which had failed. This time it had the dreaded Blue Screen Of Death (BSOD) my initial feeling was of memory problems and indeed after getting into partition diagnostics Dimm2 was cooked.
Money is tight in retail and therefore the company are reluctant to spend so I was asked to replace the strip assuming I could find compatible memory in the unused and obsolete PCs. I found sufficent PC2 4200U memory in another unused PC where the mother board caps had failed, to upgrade the PC to 1Gb. When I installed the memory paired correctly in the correct slots upon booting I received a message:- OS install mode enabled, memory limited to 256Mb.
Having just put 1Mb in I was surprised and initially thought it was memory incompatibility issues. Having found no reference to speak of on the Dell website I then googled for an answer. It appears many people have had this problem with Dell Pcs but Dell seem to have ignored the problem. I finally found a neat solution on TS forum which mentions that the problem was not memory incompatibility but the problem was in finding a way to turn off the OS install mode. It would appear that the problem can occur due to failure of the onboard battery, which is what had happened in this case previously or if the mode switches on for some other unknown reason. Once the mode is switched on, it restricts memory to 256 MB which mean years of page file swapping and hours in order to do anything at all.
I list the solution below as times are hard for everyone and others may fall foul of this quirk
To rectify the problem and remove the OS install mode problem:-
Reboot the system and press F2 to go to BIOS setup.
Turn on caps lock, scroll lock, and num lock.
Press Alt + E, Alt +F (you should hear a beep) then Alt + B.
This clears the NVRAM and defaults BIOS options back to their factory recommended settings.( you may later need to switch off floppy drive in bios depending if you do not have one installed and your bios default is on)
After many hours searching the problem was solved having followed the above procedure
I find it hard to understand why the Dell support website appears to have no solution to this problem, then again I am not surprised.
I should mention the PC is now flying after a bit of housekeeping
Money is tight in retail and therefore the company are reluctant to spend so I was asked to replace the strip assuming I could find compatible memory in the unused and obsolete PCs. I found sufficent PC2 4200U memory in another unused PC where the mother board caps had failed, to upgrade the PC to 1Gb. When I installed the memory paired correctly in the correct slots upon booting I received a message:- OS install mode enabled, memory limited to 256Mb.
Having just put 1Mb in I was surprised and initially thought it was memory incompatibility issues. Having found no reference to speak of on the Dell website I then googled for an answer. It appears many people have had this problem with Dell Pcs but Dell seem to have ignored the problem. I finally found a neat solution on TS forum which mentions that the problem was not memory incompatibility but the problem was in finding a way to turn off the OS install mode. It would appear that the problem can occur due to failure of the onboard battery, which is what had happened in this case previously or if the mode switches on for some other unknown reason. Once the mode is switched on, it restricts memory to 256 MB which mean years of page file swapping and hours in order to do anything at all.
I list the solution below as times are hard for everyone and others may fall foul of this quirk
To rectify the problem and remove the OS install mode problem:-
Reboot the system and press F2 to go to BIOS setup.
Turn on caps lock, scroll lock, and num lock.
Press Alt + E, Alt +F (you should hear a beep) then Alt + B.
This clears the NVRAM and defaults BIOS options back to their factory recommended settings.( you may later need to switch off floppy drive in bios depending if you do not have one installed and your bios default is on)
After many hours searching the problem was solved having followed the above procedure
I find it hard to understand why the Dell support website appears to have no solution to this problem, then again I am not surprised.
I should mention the PC is now flying after a bit of housekeeping
