My Dell saga

Yes I still hold my breath everytime I push that go button - BUT! - it is still starting faultlessly - its difficult to forget that it chewed through 3 motherboards and every other replaceable part to get there.

I up graded to Win 10 Pro - but that was not a picnic - the video driver appears not to be supported by Win 10 - unbelievable DEll - so had to upgrade - noon-auto - remove video driver - download Win 10 Pro upgrade manually etc - did however upgrade almost faultlessly.

The video driver does give me a bit of grief with a few programs but Win 10 recovers without to much sweat.

However - however - [and I think this is ENTIRELY WIN 10 fault - but I can't help putting a bit of blame to Dell XPS - 15] - I was changing to go somewhere and the laptop was sitting there open - it suddenly rebooted - came up with configuring Win 10 updates - but reopened.

Didn't think more of it - well now that was the problem.

Closed lid - goes into sleep - and later that night with laptop on my knee in front of TV [and tons of urgent work to do] - I opened the lid and pushed start - AND ALL I GOT was a light blue screen.

To explain - I have bitlocker configured to encrypt and decrypt - and have on start up get a light blue screen asking for the decryption password - it has worked faultlessly since turning this on - 1 year ago. Even after Win 10 upgrade.

NOW ALL I HAD was a blank light blue screen.

esc esc - gave me bitlocker - recovery screen - and yes I had the code - it worked and took me to a recovery screen - which gives you allsorts of recovery options - but NONE helped me - and no option recovery modes actually recovered me to Win 10.

CMD prompt takes you to a useful screen but this only told me all data was there - and for the record a USB stick worked to allow export of data if I needed [I was now into RECOVER/RESTORE gut wretching mode].

Cmd prompt also allows DOS like decryption of bitlocked drives - which I did - that worked - but still no boot.

Then after trolling the internet for hours and really getting no where - I found a entry [almost missed "just type unlock bitcode in blank blue screen"

AND YEP _ GUESS WHAT - worked 100% - [I had even been able to roll back the previous Win 10 update that started all this] - it booted into - the auto cleanup and Win 10 opened 100% as though nothing had been out of place.

Bitlocker - through Win 10 said drives were unencrypted - but I still had blank light blue screen on boot.

So with tongue in cheek - I told Win 10 to bitlock encrypt the drives - [apparently bitlocker Win 10 is a different from previous versions] - anyway it encrypted faultlessly and yep light blue blank screen still there - now what.

Through Win 10 I told it to turn off bitlocker ALL drives - so it goes into decrypt - and if you then look at properties the only clue that it has decrypted is Bitlocker option is "Turn on BitLocker"?

- so I rebooted - and OMG - all was normal - light blue screen NOW gone - normal Windows boot - 100%

And that is the end of the TALE.

Dell problem - "if the cap fits"