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Inspiron Desktop 530S Freezes at BIOS Start (DELL Screen) - HELP!
I've spent the last two days scouring the support site and these discussion boards without much luck. My 1.5 year old 530s freezes right at the Dell BIOS screen. There's no error message, no error beeps, and the power light indicates that everything is ok. I cannot hit F2 or F12 to change Setup or Boot Menu, so I'm stuck there too. I can power it on and off and that's about the only thing I can do.
I've followed the online support wizard, and for some reason, after I tell it that I'm not getting any error messages, it starts telling me to start twiddling with Vista, when I'm still stuck at the system boot screen.
I'm running BIOS 1.0.5, if that helps. It's been running flawlessly before this event, and I'm have not made any hardware changes and the only software changes I've made in the last 2 months is that I bought "Plants vs. Zombies" (great game!)
Any insights, clues, ideas, (heck, even well-wishes and commiseration) is appreciated!
-Rob
Captcustom
1 Message
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November 29th, 2009 16:00
i have been having this same issue on my dell computer 530s since i got it. usually after i reboot it about 4 to 5 times it works fine for about 2-3 months. Also the first few times it turns on after this issue it runs slow.
ord2koa
2 Posts
0
April 27th, 2010 10:00
Exact same problem today.
Computer was working fine last night, went to check my e-mail today, and my desktop was frozen. CTRL-ALT-DEL would not reboot, so I pushed the on/off. When it tried to boot, I saw "AHCI BIOS not installed" flash on the screen, Dell logo came up, but it wouldn't boot.
No errors, no beeps. When I go to F2, it shows my BIOS is 1.0.18.
I followed advice to unplug, start and let it sit for 30 minutes to see if it would work out the problem on its own.
Right now (40 minutes later) I see a green bar and Microsoft, so it looks like Vista is going to try to fix itself, but who knows? ARGH!
parisnwinter
14 Posts
0
November 25th, 2010 02:00
I've had this problem on and off and I could not remember the easy fix. I unplugged all usb's and tried re-starting but no cigar, then I remembered that Dell recommended doing a hard shut down, then disconnecting the power cord, then pushing the power button again to re-set the CMOS. And voila! It started again.
It worked like a charm in the past, and it worked again today. Hope this helps anyone re-searching this issue.
espod17
8 Posts
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January 2nd, 2011 11:00
Same problem here with 530 S. Funny thing is that the USB cable to my printer (HP Laser 1505 w/no card readers) seems to be the main culprit. when I unplug it, the PC generally boots. when it doesn't, I unplug the a/c plug, wait a few secs and then repower. Works every time.
But I am going to try BIOS upgrade to see if that helps the overall situation.
espod17
8 Posts
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January 2nd, 2011 16:00
DId BIOS upgrade - it DID NOT improve the situation. Tried swapping printers. Swapping printers didn't help either. Strange. But disconnecting the printer from USB port at time of boot definitely DID allow the system to boot (as has been).
RobM-FL
7 Posts
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January 2nd, 2011 18:00
Long story short - I had the problem AGAIN and I finally figured out the root cause - a loose hard drive cable. Opened the machine, reseated the cable, and all's been well since.
Somehow, it loosens up with time, and when the BIOS cannot find the HD on boot, it just sits and waits for "one to appear".
espod17
8 Posts
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January 2nd, 2011 19:00
I did try reseating my hard drive cables - although they seemed to pretty firm already. Didn't help? Were your loose cables were SATA? Hard for me to see how they could come loose, especially if I wasn't playing around much inside the box. I think this was my first time opening this box.
Glad it's working 4 u.
espod17
8 Posts
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January 2nd, 2011 19:00
fyi the latest BIOS as of today 1/2/2011 is BIOS 1.0.10
moth170
2 Posts
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November 20th, 2011 17:00
This solved the problem, this got me to the OS. THANK YOU!!!!:emotion-22:
moth170
2 Posts
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November 20th, 2011 17:00
Thank you! THAT was helpful! Unlike "customer service" or their website.
scottis8688
3 Posts
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July 7th, 2012 14:00
I had the same problem after we tried loading an SD card through our printer. It hung up so we removed the SD card. This slowed the boot up process waaaaay down, to where we thought we hosed up the hard drive.
I unplugged the printer from the USB port, unplugged the power from the printer to let it reset. The PC booted normally. I then plugged the power back into the printer, then plugged the USB cable back into the PC, then restarted and it boots normally.
Try doing what I did, just unplugging the printer. If you have success like I did, move on to the other USB devices. Most likely if you did something odd with a USB device - like we did, the SD card in the printer - unplugging and resetting or power cycling the USB device will fix it.
scottis8688
3 Posts
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July 7th, 2012 14:00
REPOSTING - this time with the "this is a suggested answer" box checked.
I had the same problem after we tried loading an SD card through our printer. It hung up so we removed the SD card. This slowed the boot up process waaaaay down, to where we thought we hosed up the hard drive.
I unplugged the printer from the USB port, unplugged the power from the printer to let it reset. The PC booted normally. I then plugged the power back into the printer, then plugged the USB cable back into the PC, then restarted and it boots normally.
Try doing what I did, just unplugging the printer. If you have success like I did, move on to the other USB devices. Most likely if you did something odd with a USB device - like we did, the SD card in the printer - unplugging and resetting or power cycling the USB device will fix it.