Dell Inspiron 8200 locks up on boot

[Hokie]

I recently replaced the drive in this laptop after the old one died. I installed Win XP Home. It locks up frequently on boot up or when it comes out of hibernation. The new drive is a Futisu 40 GB. The old drive was a Hitachi. I have flashed the latest BIOS and downloaded all the latest drivers and patches from Dell. When it locks up it is a complete freeze. I have to hold the power button down 5 seconds to reboot.

The point at which it freezes varies. Once I get into Windows it usually is fine.

[Papa]

1. could be another bad or faulty piece of hardware

Try swapping out the ram, or if there are 2 sticks take out one, then the other and see if it's any better.

Likewise try disconnecting the cd rom drive or floppy drive if there is one. Also unhook an external devices that you might have attached (usb drive, webcam, etc...)

In my experience if you rule out drivers/bios as an issue, and it's a fresh install of XP, then it's usually a bad piece of hardware. Hopefully it's not a bad motherboard.

[Prisoner_Number_Six]

2. Possibly a heating problem

Dell laptops are fairly stable, but all laptops can overheat without a lot of encouragement. Make certain you blow the dust out of the cooling fans with a shot of compressed air, and download the fan control utility from this location: http://www.diefer.de/i8kfan/

I have it on my Dell Latitude, and it really helps. Before I found and installed it, my machine would occasionally freeze also. It hasn't since the software installation (it's freeware).

I believe the Inspiron series may also have the hard-wired security microchip on board. Do you happen to have any of the security features (accessed via the BIOS) engaged? Have you checked the BIOS power settings? Since you flashed it, I assume you went through it to check the settings, so my first bet is the heat issue.