Dell cant get past POST screen unless escape is pressed

[Big Jim]

Have a DELL XPS desktop in that will gets stuck at the post screen loading bar about 50% across.

If I press escape however it will proceed.
Is there a way to get the actual POST info up on screen (no option in bios) by pressing a button or combgo on the keyboard

it will enter setup by pressing F2 but boot menu wont work until I have pressed escape

Can't really diagnose the problem till I know what the BIOS is getting stuck at.

Thanks
James

[ComputerRepairTech]

is there a disable quiet boot option in the bios?

Edit: While i was searching for dell xps bios info I saw one guy with a similar complaint saying it turned out to be one of his usb ports. (http://en.community.dell.com/support.../19736071.aspx)

[Big Jim]

no option in bios, and it does it with or without a usb device plugged in so I dont think usb is the problem in this case, he did also state that esc button did nothing for him in that link.

Thanks
James

[ComputerRepairTech]

I guess start unhooking extra drives etc attempting to narrow it down

[Big Jim]

yeh none of that actually made any difference, i unhooked absolutely everything optical hdd, used workshop ram, tried both GFX cards in different slots.

Only thing I havent tried is anothr CPU and another PSU although the system does boot into windows ok.

[ComputerRepairTech]

not cpu unlikely psu, did you try resetting cmos? search for bios updates?

Edit: how long has it been doing that? is it just a recent change?

[cypress]

I would try resetting CMOS like stated above. The fact that it does boot into Windows says something.

Have you checked the event viewer and any logs?

[glricht]

Had a similar situation yesterday with a Dell Optiplex 740. During post, the bar would stop at about 50%. It would eventually continue after about a minute or so. Pressing ESC would cause it to immediately continue.

Discovered in setup that one of the SATA drives was enabled even though no drive was physically installed. Turning it off eliminated the POST delay.

Evidently BIOS was querying the drive and waiting for a response. Since there was no physical drive attached, everybody waited until the query finally timed out or ESC was pressed.

[Big Jim]

I reset the bios and it seemed to be ok.
the issue it came in with is that sometimes after this screen it would just go to a black screen.

the machine has 2 x 8800GT gfx cards running SLI in it, one way round it does this quite often, switch the cards around and the problem goes away lol.

oh and these gfx cards passed a stress test with no problems as well. explain that one. lol