Tech Forum

One of the computers in our Stake had a power outage as it was booting up last week. Initially it looked like the drive had been hosed. It would not boot regardless of anything I tried.

Tonight I put in an old drive that was known to be good. Got the same errors so I called Dell Support. I put the original drive back in and some boot settings were then changed and wonder of all it booted up!

Now the silly thing boots up with an American Megatrends Inc splash telling me that the cover had been opened and to press F1 continue and so on.

The other drive came from the Dell this one replaced, so it would have been quite compatible.

Any ideas how it became confused? and how to get it back to just being a Dell?

Thanks

lrawlins wrote:telling me that the cover had been opened and to press F1 continue and so on.

Well, it has. <grin> I think it's in the BIOS where you can "acknowledge" the message. Once you do that, it may go back to normal.

As for the American Megatrends Inc splash screen, check your BIOS boot options. I think you've changed something so that now you're seeing the "raw" stuff instead of the nice pleasing Dell/Windows screen that normally covers it.

I tried F1 and F5 several times but it kept coming back to the AMI splash screen.

One more call to Dell I suppose....

lrawlins wrote:One of the computers in our Stake had a power outage as it was booting up last week. Initially it looked like the drive had been hosed. It would not boot regardless of anything I tried.

Tonight I put in an old drive that was known to be good. Got the same errors so I called Dell Support. I put the original drive back in and some boot settings were then changed and wonder of all it booted up!

Now the silly thing boots up with an American Megatrends Inc splash telling me that the cover had been opened and to press F1 continue and so on.

The other drive came from the Dell this one replaced, so it would have been quite compatible.

Any ideas how it became confused? and how to get it back to just being a Dell?

Thanks

This is the chassis intrusion detection. It's part of the BIOS in some machines. You need to go in and reset the security (or disable the feature) in system setup (usually F2 during startup but before Windows splash screen). A quick google search lead me to this dell site.

After two calls to Dell Support I have turned off the intrusion notification in the BIOS.

Turns out it really is an AMI mother board!

At least now it boots without this warning that would likely terrify the clerk.

Bye,