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Inspiron 17 won't boot
My inspiron 17 will not boot. It is in some sort of continuous loop where the dell logo appears, then the accessibility button lights flash in order from left to right, then right to left, the all three simultaneously. Then the screen goes blank and it starts the whole process over again. It never beeps. It shows to press F2 for Setup or F12 for Boot Options, but neither works. Any ideas? I'm thinking the motherboard is toast...
ejn63
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October 11th, 2014 15:00
Unplug, remove battery and hold the power button for 30 sec. Remove and reinstall both memory modules. Try again.
If nothing, remove the hard drive - does that allow the system to POST at lest to a BIOS screen? If it does, the hard drive is toast.
Mick1moore
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October 12th, 2014 14:00
Thanks for your response! I tried your suggestions and still have the same problem. No POST at all. Any other ideas?
ejn63
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October 12th, 2014 17:00
If there are two memory modules, as is likely, try the modules one at a time in each socket until the problem ceases - that is, try one module in the upper socket, then the other in the same socket, and then try in the lower socket. That will isolate a potential bad memory module (or socket). If the module is at fault, replace it -- if the socket is bad (or you still can't get anywhere with this test), it's the mainboard that is bad and will need to be replaced.
Mick1moore
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October 20th, 2014 22:00
The new main board I ordered came in today, so I got it installed. I went straight to setup to make sure the new board recognized everything. It went through the POST just fine, tried to resume the last Windows session but it took so long I went ahead and rebooted it again and had it start up without trying to resume the last session. All seemed fine. I ran a virus scanner and had it fix some errors. Then Windows downloaded some updates, so I shut it down so the updates could install. The next time I powered it up, it did the SAME EXACT THING as before! I power cycled several times and still no POST and it would not allow me to go into setup or the boot menu. What could this be? The new motherboard seemed to fix the problem at least temporarily. So frustrating!