Laptop won't start up

Blisterman · 04-10-2012 10:23am #1

I have a Dell Inspiron laptop running Windows 7.

From yesterday, whenever I've tried to turn it on, the Dell screen shows, the progress bar gets about 2/3 of the way across, and stays at that indefinitely.

When I press F2 to get to setup, it highlights as if it's been recognised, but never actually goes to setup, so I can't even get the computer to boot from a CD to run diagnostics tests.

Does anyone have any idea what might be causing this problem? It's been completely sudden. Yesterday morning it was perfectly fine, no indication of any problem.

Torqay · 04-10-2012 11:13am

Disconnect the power and remove the battery. Press the power button a few time to discharge completely. Then try again.

Blisterman · 04-10-2012 8:18pm

Torqay wrote: »

Disconnect the power and remove the battery. Press the power button a few time to discharge completely. Then try again.

Thanks. Tried that but no luck sadly.
My original post was mistaken. Its actually a dell studio 1749.

ChunkyLover_53 · 04-10-2012 8:21pm

If its out of warranty open her up and reconnect hard drive, sounds similar to a problem I had with the Dell XPS 1710

bonzodog2 · 04-10-2012 10:14pm

I have an Inspiron 1501, when booting you can press F12 to get to a boot-from-device menu. I use this to boot from a USB stick prepared with YUMI and a live Linux ISO. Maybe that would let you choose to boot from CD too.

duckysauce · 04-10-2012 10:31pm

try one memory stick at a time and take hard drive and cd drive out

Blisterman · 04-10-2012 10:42pm

duckysauce wrote: »

try one memory stick at a time and take hard drive and cd drive out

Problem is i can't even access the f12 menu to get it to boot off a cd or memory stick. Nor can i eject the cd that's in there as there's no paperclip hole and the eject button doesn't work.

duckysauce · 04-10-2012 11:46pm

Blisterman wrote: »

Problem is i can't even access the f12 menu to get it to boot off a cd or memory stick. Nor can i eject the cd that's in there as there's no paperclip hole and the eject button doesn't work.

I meant to remove the whole unit

Blisterman · 05-10-2012 9:05am

Removed both hard drives, and managed to get the CD out.

It now boots up, and I can boot up from CD, but obviously can't do much without a hard drive.

Bought a hard drive cradle, and put the main hard drive into it, but it's not being recognised by other computers. Haven't tried the other hard drive yet.

Could it be an issue with the hard drive? It's a 512gb SSD, which I only installed about a month ago, and was working fine until now.

Media999 · 05-10-2012 9:27pm

If the SSD is not being recognised by any PCs its gonna be a problem with that alright. Try several sata cables obviously.

Must have set you back a few quid for a 512gb SSD!

Blisterman · 05-10-2012 10:32pm

Media999 wrote: »

If the SSD is not being recognised by any PCs its gonna be a problem with that alright. Try several sata cables obviously.

Must have set you back a few quid for a 512gb SSD!

Ok. Strangely after leaving the hard disk connected in the cradle about 15 minutes, the computer eventually recognised it. i ran scandisk and it found and fixed some problems.

Reinserted the hard drive and a
same problem. Won't start up.

Media999 · 05-10-2012 10:51pm

Am i right in saying this laptop is a few year old. I had a Dell studio that i bought in 2008 i think.

Maybe its some other incompatibilty.

Have you tried the drive elsewhere?

Is it an SSD or a HDD you have?

Allyall · 05-10-2012 11:10pm

I have had this problem before. (Actually a few, that sound the same, with different solutions).

I left it for an hour, was out etc.. When i came back, the problem was sorted, So i looked it up, (This is going back about a year, possibly longer) and many people had reported the same thing ~ That leaving it alone for a decent length of time, worked, I'd say 30 - 40 minutes.
I cannot for the life of me remember what caused it. (Most likely a driver finishing updating/installing.)

But i had tried many different things before hand.

Other things to try, are rebuild the MBR, Using Partition Wizard when the Hard Drive is in the cradle.

Scan Disk etc..

Reinstall Chipset and Video/Graphic Drivers.

Startup Repair

Blisterman · 06-10-2012 3:19pm

Ended up giving up and dropping it in for repair.

Turns out the problem was with the SSD's firmware. Once that was upgraded, everything worked fine. So thanks for your help everyone.

Laptop won't start up

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