Inspiron 8500 fan & memory problem

Here is what i have

Inspiron 8500
Win XP pro
Intel Mobile 4 2.2Ghz
512 MB ram
60g HD
GeForce 4 4200go video card 64 ram

1. Since i change the hard drive and reinstall the win XP, my fan is on pretty much all the time. we are talking about my fan come on when i use IE and firefox.
i been search online, but most of them is talking about why the fan do no come on. Does anyone know what wrong with my fan?

2. My memory is acting up lately, i have two 256mb memory in this pc. But every time i turn on my pc at BIO, it change my memory from 512 to 256. but if i turn it off, and take the memory out and put it back in, it will switch back to 512. Then again, next time i start my pc it will go to 256 again. Does anyone know why?

Thanks for the help

 

bump

lastest news
i updated the video card driver from dell website, when it ask me to restart, i cant restart and my screen is black now. The driver fxxk up my screen.

I really need help

 

My old rig (now my wife's) is an Inspiron 8500 and I had a lot of the same problems that you describe (one of the big reasons I stepped up to the M1210).

On my 8500, the problem was that I think one of the memory slots had gone bad. When I took the RAM chip out of the bad slot it then booted up & worked fine.

The 8500 is sort of an old machine though...yours isn't still under warantee is it?

 

no i'm not under warantee anymore. How much would it cost for the video card replacement?

i really think my video card was acting up thats why my fan was on all the time, then the driver kill it.

The dell rep told me that there are not responseable for the driver download. it download at your own risk.

 

I dont think the driver killed it, have you tried booting into safe mode (f8 key) i you can, uninstall the driver, then reinstall it. The memory problem sounds like a bad c-mos battery, that should be fairly easy to replace.

 

well i try everything, and when i turn on my pc all i get is black screen. Dell logo is not coming up at all. there is not much i can do. i try Fn, F8 F12..... anything else i should try?
i even try to plug in diff LCD and its not working either.

What about the c-mos battery, can i change it?

I really need some help.

 

Batman19,

I know this is a very old topic... but hey, you never know..

Perhaps I can help you to get your geforce 4200go to work again. what I suspect is that you downloaded and ran a videocard bios update which corrupted the videocard firmware = killed your graphics card.

Lessons learned? NEVER DO A VIDEOBIOS UPDATE IN WINDOWS !!

How do I know??... I did exactly the same..... and, like you, started looking for a fix. I tried several options found via goolge but none of them fixed the problem so no need to mention them..:.

But if you go through the steps below you should be be able to get your videocard working again (I know it's not the most elegant solution but it will fix your graphics card..)

First of all, you need another working video card with the same GPU. Mem size doesn't need to be a 100% match.... In my case I had wrecked a 4200go 64mb and used a 4200go 32MB to fix it.

Ok, here we go.. step 1
- Download the latest video bios from the dell i8500 driver page (same file you used to break it..) you only need the file ending on .rom.
- download a copy of the nvflash tool from i.e. gurud3. (think I used the latest version available)
- extract and copy all files (both bios and nvflash) to either a (bootable) floppydisk or bootable cdrom.

Now first test if it see if it boots to DOS. If that works check if the bios file isn't corrupt. You can do that with nvflash (type nvflash.exe --help for all options, think you need nvflash.exe --version).

Step 2

- prepare the broken videocard but putting it in closed range to your laptop.
- Remove battery and AC power.
- Remove keyboard
- remove all screws that keep your graphics card in place but don't remove the graphics card (yet..).
- Because we cannot use the laptop keyboard during this process you need to connect an external usb keyboard. Check if it works by powering up your laptop and pressing F2..

Step 3 - this is where the magic happens but you need to pay close attention..

- Start your laptop, make sure it automatically boots from floppy or cdrom.
- During POST (when the white progress bar reaches approx 60-70%) press the pause/break key on your keyboard. The POST process will be halted.

- now quickly (but gently and very precise - wear rubber gloves..) remove the working videocard from the system (don't forget to remove lcd cable first!!!) and replace it with the broken one and make sure it's well inserted including the LCD cable. The screen will remain black, don't expect it to work at this moment, we haven't done anything yet.
- If all is ok hit the enter key on your keyboard.

- After a little while you will see/hear your floppy /cdrom spin up, wait for some more time to let it load dos (therefore it's handy to practice with the working card and get some feeling how long that takes)

- Now (blind) type nvflash.exe --auto romname.rom (for cdrom you probably need to change drive letter first - in my case, from A: to R and hit enter. The flash process will start (again floppy / cdrom spins up) and because of the AUTO switch, there's no user interaction needed.. Once the process has completed you will heard one short beep. Horay you've probably done it!

- now CTRL-ALT-DEL your machine and if all went well the Dell logo should appear again !!!

If you heard 2 or 3 beeps after the firmware upgrade you need to repeat all steps above but hit the pause key a bit later.

Let me know if it worked !!

Arie