Dell Dimension 3100 help

ShowMeTheMoola

I have a Dell Dimension 3100, bought in 2006 and around 2008 it would just keep rebooting. It would maybe get as far as the home screen and then re-start continuously. Since then I have bought 2 laptops and its just been gathering dust.

Is this pc worth repairing and upgrading and is it possible as I've read somewhere that some Dell pc parts cannot be upgraded or something?

If not, any suggestions on what to purchase?

Would a new monitor be essential what with HD and other improvements? The one I have is fine.

It would be used mainly for internet, downloading music and movies occassionally, Office and my son would probably play online games (no idea what though lol).

My budget would be £500 including keyboard and mouse.

fishybusiness

Difficult to say how much it would cost to repair.

If you took it to a shop, and say it needed a hard drive, you would probably have a £100 bill. Is the tower worth that much? No, IMHO it is not.

If you go the repair/ upgrade route, you would be better putting your money in to a new unit. That era of Dell is Pentium 4, upgrade would mean taking everything out of the tower and replacing.

You could look at a replacement Dell tower. Be careful of the video out lead, yours will be VGA, most if not all now are DVI. You would need an adapter (less than a fiver) to plug in your monitor.

John_Gray

Ensuring you have removed the power cable from the PSU socket, take the side off the system unit, clean out all the dust/fluff/dirt/dead mice, etc., systematically remove and replace every card (including the memory cards) and remove and replace each plug in each socket.

They see what happens when you try to power up again.

closed

Try F8 at boot, then safe mode - if that works, and you don't need any data from it, a factory restore might help

Laz123

My 3100 is over 8 years and still going strong. The main problem is overheating (which can cause rebooting) which needs a hoover nozzle squeezing in between the front air vents on both sides. You'd be surprised how much dust collects there and you can't see it.

Once you've done that blast with compressed air inside the case to get rid of any inside dust. Then make sure all connections are secure.

If you don't need the data or have copied it and you have the discs restore to factory settings. If you don't have the discs press Ctrl and F11 on bootup and chose for the recovery partition to restore.