Contents 15
Power Lights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 344
System Lights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 345
Diagnostic Lights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 347
Beep Codes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 350
System Messages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 351
Dell Diagnostics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 353
When to Use the Dell Diagnostics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 353
Starting the Dell Diagnostics From Your Hard Drive . . . . . 353
Starting the Dell Diagnostics From the Drivers and
Utilities CD (Optional) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 354
Dell Diagnostics Main Menu. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 355
Drivers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 356
What Is a Driver? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 356
Identifying Drivers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 356
Microsoft® Windows® XP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 357
Microsoft Windows Vista® . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 357
Reinstalling Drivers and Utilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 357
Using Windows Device Driver Rollback. . . . . . . . . . . 357
Manually Reinstalling Drivers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 358
Troubleshooting Software and Hardware Problems in the Microsoft®
Windows® XP and Microsoft Windows Vista® Operating Systems. . . . . 358
Restoring Your Operating System. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 359
Using Microsoft Windows System Restore . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 359
Starting System Restore. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 360
Undoing the Last System Restore . . . . . . . . . . . . . 360
Enabling System Restore . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 360
Using Dell™ PC Restore and Dell Factory Image Restore . . . . . . . 361
Windows XP: Dell PC Restore . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 361
Windows Vista: Dell Factory Image Restore. . . . . . . . . 362
Using the Operating System Media. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 363
Before you Begin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 363
Reinstalling Windows XP or Windows Vista. . . . . . . . . 363