something must be failing?

fishnbanjo - Point taken: Dell diag is THE way to go (F8/windows diag option just not good enough) if JTW doesn't have means of creating diag boot disk from another PC. And the more I think about, the more I recall Dell diag (which F key is that again?) included some pretty intensive hardware tests. I remember tinkering with some just to see, but it is also coming back to me there were others that pushed the hardware pretty hard so I didn't play with those since my system actually ran pretty well - no point stressing a good component without real need. JTW might want to take the risk given issues, but I guess he should still start with memory test 1st.

ok wow lot of posts and suggestions since i last looked. il try my best answer them all.

first off i have made sure the BIOS is up t date, downloaded direct from the dell support page :)

we added an extra 2GB of RAM the original still inside the machine. (also have tried both sets on their own to no avail)

the tests i have run have been windows own tests, all came back A-OK, several 3rd party tests, again all A-OK. i have not done any tests by dell that i can remember. so ill do those and get back to you :)

yup the machine is out of warranty, had it 4 years so its getting close to the buy new time of what ever 5 years?

and finally again ill run the tests suggested and see if the sata controllers need an update :)



cheers everyone :)

Let us know ..........

in response to theog


Check your ram.
Memory Diagnostics Tool
i do this every start up, as once its done and restarts it works fine.

Memtest86+ - Advanced Memory Diagnostic Tool
i could not find a spare disc, so will run asap :)


Check your HD.
SFC /SCANNOW Command - System File Checker
this takes forever lol - no violations found

Disk Check
no issues at all

Check with a hard drive diagnostic tools.
Hard Drive Diagnostics Tools and Utilities (Storage) - TACKtech Corp.
again no cd atm


You may need update you Sata controller drivers.
Advanced troubleshooting for "Stop 0x0000007B" errors in Windows XP
Error message when you start a Windows 7 or Windows Vista-based computer after you change the SATA mode of the boot drive: "STOP 0x0000007B INACCESSABLE_BOOT_DEVICE"

nope these did not change anything

nope no overclocking in any way shape or form.

of what you listed i have looked into a few and found nothing wrong.

all settings have been reset, re-updated etc and nope not changed those settings

TVeblen said:

Then I fall back to my original thought: you have a failing component.

The key, IMO, is the cold/warm boot bit. If what you describe is accurate, that the computer always fails to load windows without errors when booting cold, and always succeeds to load when booting warm, then that strongly points in that one direction.

If you were dealing with a bad driver I would think it would exhibit the behavior either all the time or completely random.

Did these symptoms begin right after you installed the extra 2G of memory, or was the new 2G playing happily for a while before these symptoms started?

yup thats 100% accurate about the boot cold/warm

all drivers are up to date. i see if windows can find any and then run 3rd party software to find new ones.

the 2GB has worked flawlessly. this all started about a month ago. had the new RAM in erm i cant remember maybe about a year. and i have been running windows 7 with no other issues since after the 2nd month of UK release. i just turned it on one day and BANG errors galore