Follow up to "Boot fails at checkpoint Ithr" from a couple of weeks ago

A couple of weeks ago I spoke with Dan Mays at Dell Hardware Support, who was nice enough to take my calls even though my Dimension 4700 is no longer under warranty. Unfortunately, he told me that all the symptoms point to my motherboard failing and it would need to be replaced. He was not able to authorize a replacement at no charge for me, something I was hoping for, but not holding my breath, to get.

Now my other Dimension 4700 is exhibiting the exact same problem. The boot will fail and return the error message of "Boot failed at checkpoint Ithr." And same as my first 4700, I can fix it by removing the battery for a few minutes. My initial problem was with a 4700 I purchased brand new, my new problem is with a refurbished unit (which is actually newer than my "new" unit by a few months) I purchased three or four months ago off the Dell Outlet site.

I have phoned Dell again and left a message for Dan Mays as well as Shelly Pruett concerning this issue. That's two Dimension 4700's, owned by the same person, with the same problem. What are the odds of that? I'm hoping that now, Dell will help me with this. I have two systems that can not be trusted to boot up. If anyone has any ideas, I'm looking for all the information I can get. The Dell Forums have plenty of issues of this type, although there seems to be a trend to 4700's heating up.

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