Re: how to clear nvram on inspiron 8200? cant see both cdrom drives

thanks. agreed on the subject line.
i thought about updating the bios, but there is no floppy on it. the module is missing. that could be something to try as well.

i did not try system restore, i'm not a big fan of that - and in this case i dont have the complete history of the unit, i dont know when the problem really happened. it could be something to do before i do a full system reinstallation.

i also see that he has roxio installed, and 3 drivers are listed under the device drivers for each cd. i wonder if uninstalling roxio will make a difference. that is the next thing i will probably try. the user says he hasnt been able to burn a cd in a while. he also had a driver called gearaspi which i removed.

Christopher Muto wrote:

oops. that was for a dimension 8200... for a inspiron 8200 check this out...
http://www.geocities.com/thebithead/I8200FAQ.htm#BIOS

and your subject line is a bit misleading... what you probably want to ask is how to get xp to recognize your cd drive and that then vram is just one method that you want to try to help troubleshoot... i wonder what led up to the thing not working... and if you tried to simply use system restore to roll back the os to a time when the cd did work.

"Christopher Muto" <muto@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:ty5af.2218$Ar5.1479@xxxxxxxxxxx

alt-e when in bios.  system should beep as confirmation...
http://forums.us.dell.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=dim_bios&message.id=40101

"Jay B" <jayb@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:sV4af.38701$rE2.32377@xxxxxxxxxxx

Does anyone know how to clear the nvram on an inspiron 8200?
the usual sequence of cmos setup, turn on num/caps/scrol lock and hit alt-e does not work. the lights dont come on when hitting the num/caps/scroll lock buttons.
i did find that alt-f did seem to reset the bios back to default settings, but that does not help in this case.

is this a laptop where the nvram needs to be reset from a jumper on the mb? dell's docs dont say anything about this.

the reason why i want to do this is both cd rom drives are failing under windows xp home. if i insert the xp boot cdrom disk or dell resource boot disk, and restart the computer, it does see it and boots up, diagnostics for the cd rom pass fine!.

but under normal operation, there are yellow exclamation marks by each cd drive.
uninstalling and reinstalling does not help, they come right back the same way.
there are no drivers on dell's web site for these devices.
i suspect there was some sort of spyware attack, which also affected the printer and usb, both of which also were not working. the printer and usb are now working fine.

i'm trying to avoid a reinstall of the operating system if i dont have to.
if anyone knows of a way to reset these devices, i would appreciate it.
thanks Jay 




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