M6500 Will no longer enter BIOS

Hi guys I bought an m6500 off ebay last week. When I first got it I remember going into the bios to look things over and eventually powered down.

No the laptop does not respond to any command at the splash screen.

If I press F2 or F12 it will say "entering setup" but then it just moves on to a black screen with a blinking cursor.

I have already removed the battery and the charger plug, held the power button down for 30 seconds to no avail.

I think I may have to clear (or replace) the CMOS battery.

Do you guys have any ideas.

I am willing to read just point me in the right direction.

Thanks in advance.

 

http://www.levnapc.cz/ProductsFiles/dell-precision-m6500-servisni-manual-en.pdf

 

Okay update time.

I took the laptop apart (according to the file), disconnected the CMOS for a few minutes and reconnected.

I am now able to enter bios like before by pressing F2.

I reboot and this time press F12 and the problem reoccurs.

Blank screen. Blinking cursor.

All this occurs while I am on BIOS A04

So I repeat the steps. I get the BIOS back.

This time I manage to flash BIOS A07.

Everything is good and even when I press F12 it doesn't break anything.

The only problem is now when I try to update to BIOS A10 (I was previously unaware of this files existence)
it says the file is invalid.

Any ideas?

I think I need to create a new bootable USB disk for this new file.

 

Okay I created a new disk.

A10 still wouldn't flash.

I got A09 to flash and only then would A10 flash.

Now the problem is back.

The first time I booted I pressed F2 and all was well.

I made a few changes and rebooted, didn't press anything just let it boot.

Blank screen. Blinking cursor.

Can't enter bios.

Is it possible I need a new CMOS battery?

I am stumped.

 

Ok I just switched the CMOS batteries between my M6400 and my M6500 and the issue repeats

itself on the M6500 so the CMOS batteries are not the issue.

I looked at the BIOS logs and there was a thermal event 2 years ago .

It says "System board thermal trip".

Could this have done something to the board?

Ok I have reseated the RAM and the problem seems to have been solved.

Lets see if it lasts.

 

Glad you solved it.

Shouldn't be an issue, a thermal trip is there to prevent damage from heat and modern systems are pretty good at protecting themselves from that.

 

Yeah. I was worried for awhile.

 

I know this is several months later but had to add my two cents. I have an M6500 w/quad core i7. I had to remove the DVD player to boot when mine exhibited the behavior described in this thread. I know it sounds silly and after much google searching, that is what enabled me to get back into bios. Since then I've upgraded the CPU (which was a mistake) but in doing so was left with only one working memory slot of two (other motherboards have four). Hence, max 8GB ram, decided to put old cpu back, now won't even check ram at startup (locks up). I had updated bios to A10 after cpu upgrade. Bleh. Anyway, hope the DVD thing helps someone. Peter

 

Thanks for the response. I hope you work out your issues