On Mon, 2004-03-22 at 09:57, jludwig wrote: > This is a hardware problem since yoe are not even reaching the hard > drive, much less GRUB. This could be a connection, the hard drive, the > PCI chip, BIOS, or even a failing cdrom pulling down the bus. > But not GRUB or any other software. One of the other things that come to mind here, since the problem is intermittent, is that the reserve battery may be dead or dying. As with desktops, there is an onboard battery that is used to retain the BIOS system configuration when the system is turned off and/or the laptop batteries are low or removed. If the reserve battery is dying, you may have intermittent system problems because the BIOS will fail to properly retain the laptop's HW configuration. You might want to review the Dell documentation here: http://docs.us.dell.com/docs/systems/ins8200/en/sm_en/resbatt.htm#1084976 If this is the problem, you will need to order a replacement from Dell. HTH, Marc Schwartz
