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Contents 7
11 Troubleshooting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
Dell™ Technical Update Service . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
Dell Diagnostics
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
When to Use the Dell Diagnostics
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
Starting the Dell Diagnostics From Your Hard Drive
. . . . . . . . . . . . 77
Starting the Dell Diagnostics from the Drivers and Utilities Media
. . . . 78
Dell Diagnostics Main Menu
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
Dell Support Utility
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
Accessing the Dell Support Utility
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
Clicking the Dell Support Icon
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
Double-Clicking the Dell Support Icon
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
Drive Problems
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
Media drive problems
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
If you cannot eject the CD, CD-RW, DVD, or DVD+RW drive tray
. . . . . 82
If you hear an unfamiliar scraping or grinding sound
. . . . . . . . . . . 82
Hard drive problems
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
E-Mail, Modem, and Internet Problems
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
Error Messages
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
IEEE 1394 Device Problems
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
Keyboard Problems
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
External Keyboard problems
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
Unexpected characters
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
Lockups and Software Problems
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
The computer does not start up
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
The computer stops responding
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
A program stops responding or crashes repeatedly
. . . . . . . . . . . . 89
A program is designed for an earlier Microsoft
®
Windows
®
operating system 89
A solid blue screen appears
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
Other software problems
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
Memory Problems
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
Network Problems
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
General
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN)
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
Mobile Broadband (Wireless Wide Area Network)
. . . . . . . . . . . . 91