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#11
You won't get a dump unless you have a Blue Screen of Death (BSOD).
The following are the instructions for the bios flasher. It seems to say I can just download the file and run it from windows. I don't have a floppy drive (CD only) and it would be nice to avoid making a linux CD.
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Download file to Desktop
The file T5500A07.EXE is using the Universal (Windows/ DOS) format and is designed to be directly
executed from Windows environment.
- Click Download now.
The File Download window appears.- Click the Save button.
The Save As window appears.- Select Desktop using the drop-down menu to the right of Save in.
- Click the Save button.
A progress meter moves as the download is completed.- If necessary, click X in the upper right-hand corner of the Download Progress Window to
close it upon completion.
NOTE: Shut down all other applications prior to running the BIOS update utility. The update utility
reboots your system in order to get the new BIOS loaded.
Go for the Windows method. I was thrown off by these instructions:Trust the ones you posted above the others. I was surprised to see the former directions anyway, as Dell has a Windows-based installer for their other systems.This file format consists of a BIOS executable file. To use it, download the file and copy it to a DOS-bootable diskette. With the diskette in the floppy drive, reboot the system and run the program.
The BIOS updater seemed to work fine from windows. I saw an "update successful" message before the first reboot. This boot failed. I screwed around with booting from my repair disk and after a few tries the system booted from the HD without the repair CD in the drive. I didn't do anything in particular to fix the boot problem. I tried the repair function once which reported that it didn't work. I noticed that during the boots, i would see a blue screen with a bunch of white text flash briefly and then it would start to boot again. The blue screen did not last long enough for me to read.
Anyway, it does seem to boot now from the HD with the new bios. I have attached a new jcgriff file from the current boot. I still don't see any minidump files.
One of my problems is that I do not have a Windows installation disk. If i did, I would be re-installing Windows at this point. They use some special disk image that has a bunch of special software they use here to monitor our systems and push updates out.
Maybe you can see something from the latest jcgriff file. BTW, the PRIME95 blend test run without errors. Now I'll have to see if the system hangs overnight again.
The BIOS was successfully updated:The first-time boot problem may be normal, I don't know. Sometimes those BIOS updates need a couple of reboots before everything is applied and back to normal again.Code:BIOS Version/Date Dell Inc. A07, 11/30/2010
You shouldn't be seeing any minidump files, because you have gotten no BSODs,
system survived overnight for the first time in a while so perhaps the bios update fixed the main problem. I tried running "perfmon /report" and it still does not stop data collecting and generate a report. Is that a fixable issue? Anything else i should do to see if the system is actually stable?
I appreciate all your help.
I honestly don't know about that perfmon problem. Perhaps a system files check might help, or a repair install. The latter is not possible, because as you said, you don't have a Windows installation DVD.
To do a system files check, open a command prompt with Administrative powers, and enter sfc /scannow.
Don't stress the perfmon file though, unless it's an issue you really want to get resolved. I rarely do anything with that, to be honest.
The best way I can think of to determine the problem is gone is just normal usage; leave the computer running at night, as you normally do, and watch to see if the problem happens again.