I am troubleshooting a clients laptop. The unit is a Dell Latitude Cpi A
366XT. IT has 128 mb ram and a 10 gb HD. I installed Win XP on it when I
sold it to him last January.

The unit freezes up at different times. Sometimes it boots right up into
XP, works a few minutes, then freezes up. If I stop or start any
hardware services, or even insert a CD ROM it freezes. Sometimes when I
boot it up (or try to), it freezes at the BIOS splash screen or doesn't
start at all. Also, I sometimes get a brief colored bar across the
bottom of the screen as it boots up (video chip malfunction?). If I DO
get a system freeze in XP, I have to shut off manually and restart; on
these occasions, it does not boot up at all, but if I wait a few
minutes, it will boot up once more, but may freeze again anywhere
between BIOS check and Windows XP startup.

When I was able to boot it up in XP, I did a thorough disk scan and
defrag, ran a virus check, spyware and adbot removal, but I doubt that's
it. I can't even boot to a CD or floppy, nor can I get into the BIOS
setup utility. Your supposed to be able to do that on this unit by
pressing FN-F1 on boot up, but it doesn't work.

I think my only option at this point is to put in a new/used motherboard
but I wanted to bounce this off you folks before I went ahead.

Thanks in advance for your help

Dave Enberg

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