Dell Dimension 3100/E310 troubleshooting

[Hemendu]

I own Dell Dimension 3100/E310 system. Prior to this I had an old one, which gave me lot of issues. So I purchased a new system from Dell. I reside in a remote location ,so in case my system goes bad it is very inconvenient to hire an on site technician. My friends recommended me to buy a Dell computer because I have heard that Dell systems provides self diagnostics tool. Can anyone please elaborate what these tools are all about and how to run the tests in case of any part failure?

[Felix46]

I think your friend has given you a great piece of advice. Dell system are really nice systems. These system provide a lot of tools that are very much helpful, user friendly and are very much easy to deal with. One of such tool is "Dell Diagnostics". If you have some issue with your system then you can run these Dell diagnostics on various hardware to diagnose the issue and isolate the faulty part. As you said that you reside in some remote place and from there it is quite uneasy for you to call a technician to come at your place and fix the issue for you, then you can definitely use this tool first and give a try yourself. Although the tool is user friendly , but in case if you feel any sort of inconvenience in navigating or handling the tool yourself, you can call the technical support of the Dell Computers, they will definitely guide you to run the diagnostics on you system, but if you are familiar with it and do not want to wait in the time consuming phone lines of the technical support then it is advisable for you to run the test yourself.

[Filiberto]

Sometime when you try to run the Dell Diagnostics from the hard drive and shows a message that no diagnostics utility found then you will have to run the diagnostics from the resource cd that comes along with the system. To run the Dell diagnostics from the resource cd turn on or restart the system, at the Dell logo press F12 key 4 to 5 times, u will see the boot menu there. But if the system boot to windows, wait until it boot completes the boot and you see the windows screen, restart the system and try the same step again.Once you are at the boot menu, you will have to change the boot sequence.You can run the Dell diagnostics from the resource cd only when you have changed the boot sequence. To change the boot sequence highlight IDE CD-ROM Device and press the Enter key cd ROM the list of booting devices. Select the option "Boot from the Cd" and then press the Enter key. Press 1 to start the resource cd menu and the press the enter key.You will see various types of test that you can run on your system. Select the appropriate options that meets your requirement.

[mathews]

Following are the types of test you can run from on your system:

• Express test: It is a quick test that does not take more than 20 minutes to complete and requires minimal user interaction.
• Extended test :The duration of this test is longer as it checks the devices thoroughly. it may ask a few questions which the user have to answer.
• Custom test: User can run the test as per his/her requirement on any specific device.
• Symptom tree: Shows a tree of various symptoms, user can select the symptoms that matches his/her issue most.