Me too !!!
I bought a refurbished D800 off eBay a couple of years ago. When I got it, the screw for securing the hard drive in its bay was missing, and after some time the hard drive worked itself loose far enough to break its connection. After I reseated the hard drive and booted up, I was greeted with a screen asking for a 'hard drive password' which, of course, I didn't have. Refurbisher / seller wouldn't respont to emails and Dell couldn't help because I was not the original owner plus the computer was past its warranty period. Ended up trashing the hard drive and installing a new one - which worked fine until now. A couple of days ago, while playing spider solitaire, everything froze. Alt-F4 was no help. Neither was Ctrl-Alt-Del. The only way out was to hold down the power button. Then, on attempts to restart, the power button and three green lights alongside the power button come on momentarily, then go out with no further action. After playing with it for some time, I put the whole thing in a freezer for a few minutes, and, afterward, it would boot up fine and run for three or four minutes. Then it froze and acted exactly as before. Repeated these actions several times, always with the same results. I have tried starting in Safe Mode and starting with EGA Mode Enabled (after putting it in the freezer for a few minutes), and it works the same way - runs three or four minutes and then freezes. I have also replaced the CPU Fan and the CPU with know good parts, but it still acts the same way. I am reluctant to remove the hard drive and put it in the freezer by itself because I'm afraid I'll encounter the 'hard drive password' problem again. Does anybody understand the hard drive password scenario and know how I can work around it? And does anybody have a suggestion as to what I should try next to determine what's causing the freeze-ups?
Thanks..........GSteve