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    Dell Inspiron does not boot beyond DELL logo page (first page after turn on)

    Discussion in 'Dell' started by aerial_001, Jul 7, 2009.

  1. aerial_001

    aerial_001 Notebook Enthusiast

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    I have had this Dell Inspiron 1420 for more than a year. Last night it was working. I shut it down, and in the morning when I turn it on, it only shows the dell logo page, there's a logo of intel on right, and a bar that shows the process of probably booting from ROM.
    Normally it takes 5 seconds for this process, but now only about 10% of that bar is filled and the laptop won't do anything beyond that. I cannot get into bios.

    I would appreciate your opinions on this.
    I think my warranty is expired.
     
    aerial_001, Jul 7, 2009
    #1
  2. Mastershroom

    Mastershroom wat

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    How long have you been waiting? Sometimes, if the system fails to POST, it will go through the thorough boot process the next time you start it up, and taking several minutes to fill that progress bar is not uncommon.
     
    Mastershroom, Jul 7, 2009
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  3. aerial_001

    aerial_001 Notebook Enthusiast

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    I had waited for an hour.
    Finally I found the cause of the problem. I have two RAM slots, each having 2GB of RAM. If the bottom slot is empty, everything is ok, and it does not matter which RAM I put in the top slot.
    If I insert any of the RAMs into the bottom slot, system halts upon turn on.
    I cannot leave the top slot empty, since the start address of memory is linked with the top slot.

    So do I have a faulty slot? It does not seem reasonable...!!!
     
    aerial_001, Jul 7, 2009
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  4. Hep!

    Hep! sees beauty in everything

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    When that bar takes a long time to fill it's because something is not passing the POST.
    I would first remove the hard drive, and also reseat the memory, then power on and give it 5 or so minutes. Assuming the bar fills, I would then run a memory and hard drive test.


    EDIT: Man, just a second too late, eh? I would test each stick individually using Memtest86+, both in the same slot (one at a time). If one fails, you found your problem. If they both pass, then it's likely a bad memory slot.
     
    Hep!, Jul 7, 2009
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  5. booboo12

    booboo12 Notebook Prophet

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    Also run Dell Diagnostics. Get to it by hitting "F12" on the keyboard when the computer first starts. Choose "diagnostics" from the menu.
     
    booboo12, Jul 8, 2009
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  6. aerial_001

    aerial_001 Notebook Enthusiast

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    to Hep!yeah just a second late. Thank you for the advice. I will run mem test to see what's the problem.

    This is the most strange thing I have ever seen. memory slot suddenly stop working.!!!
     
    aerial_001, Jul 11, 2009
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