My Dell inspiron 2500 starts up but will not go past the dell page if i hit f2 on switch on sometimes the message Enterin Setup appaers and stays for some time sometimes up to two or three hours if it enters setup i am asked for the bios password which i do not have (I bought the machine new from Dell) sometimes it skips this and asks to boot from hard drive and sometimes i have had success with the machine booting succesfully and operating very slowly.

any ideas:eek:

Hmm....I would take out and place back in the CMOS battery (on the motherboard). With luck, it will reset it.

Thanks.

if the dell wont run maybe its tired and you should let it walk...lol..

Hi thanks for that I did Disconnect the battery and re-set the default settings but no Go
Think it just stops while performing POST test or something
but as i have got it to run sometimes i do not think it is a Component failure. Processer fan comes on and off etc.

My Dell inspiron 2500 starts up but will not go past the dell page if i hit f2 on switch on sometimes the message Enterin Setup appaers and stays for some time sometimes up to two or three hours if it enters setup i am asked for the bios password which i do not have (I bought the machine new from Dell) sometimes it skips this and asks to boot from hard drive and sometimes i have had success with the machine booting succesfully and operating very slowly.

if its still in warranty then send it back. sounds like a faulty bios - unless u did something stupid like turned it off while updating (flashing) the BIOS then they should give u a new one (assuming its still in warranty)