Dell inspiron startup problems

[blesher]

My Dell 5100 Inspiron quickly displays Dell screen, then goes black for over a minute, then the small white little verticles bars at bottom of screen crawl along, taking minutes before Windows XP Home starts up. I want to understand what is happening. I had recently reformated the hard drive (40GB) and reinstalled XP Home - it took 4 hours to reformat. Is it the hard drive or the PC - or the motherboard? Thanks.

 

[wolluf]

Sounds like the hard drive might be in trouble. Download the drive manufacturer's diagnostic utility to check it out (normally available from their website). Presumably you reinstalled because you were having problems.

 

[Jason8342]

Try changing your ram frist

 

[Gyula]

Jason8342,

What do you mean by "Try changing your ram first."?

 

[linney]

Here are a couple of free RAM (Memory) testers.

http://www.memtest86.com/

http://oca.microsoft.com/en/windiag.asp