VOGONS


First post, by kotel

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Hi

I recently finished rebuilding my DELL Optiplex GX280 SFF. At first everything went smoothly until it finished copying files in dos mode. Now its giving me critical errors both on XP home SP3 and pro SP2. Installing form IDE optical drive to SATA HDD. I have replaced the ram, tuned off lan, audio, tried different optical drives and IDE cables, changed SATA operation from normal to combination, set minimum memory size for GPU. Any ideas?

"Driving a tank is like a box of chocolates. You never know when you blow up"
- Someone from a tank game

Reply 1 of 2, by Cosmic

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Does the BIOS have a legacy or IDE mode for the SATA ports? That would be the ideal setting for initial setup.

Is it known good/checksummed XP install media? If they're burned and not official discs, did you verify the burn?

Any other details from the critical errors, maybe a screenshot/photo? Sometimes it gives more details about what exactly failed (driver, DLL, etc).

Switching the RAM is a good idea, but running MemTest86+ to verify would be even better.

Reply 2 of 2, by douglar

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Cosmic wrote on 2024-03-09, 18:18:

Switching the RAM is a good idea, but running MemTest86+ to verify would be even better.

Agreed. That error suggests to me that the disk controller is having trouble doing UDMA.

I bet if you run memtest86+ overnight, I suspect that it will find an issue before if finishes 10 passes.

Once you can confirm that it is memory, try a single stick of memory or try looser memory timings.