Fails to boot

I am having the exact same problem on my Inspiron 5160.  Happened at like 2 am this morning. The bios progress bar runs slightly slower than it did before and at about 3/4th the way through it jumps forward and stops. f2 for setup and f12 for boot menu don't affect the bios at all but the computer does regonize the commands by displaying the message preparing for setup, or preparing boot menu. Any suggestions would be appreciated, although it will probably be thrown out of a third floor window here pretty soon. Just wondering is there anything different you did before yours' failed to boot? 

No, f2, f12, are the only things I've tryed, it just refuses to work, I'm hesitant to call dell being how I would use 4-6 hours of my life, time that I will never get back....

I talked to one of my friends the day after mine failed to boot up like that.

He said reseting the bios would work and it did.

This is risky but worked for me. I am posting from my comp right now.

unplug the ac and take your battery out then try powering the computer up

 if your power lights blink on for an instant you should be good.

You should at least be able to get into setup now if not boot normally

This will reset the cmos and the bios.  Post if it works for you im curious if we had the same problem. 

well, I did what you said, removed the battery, unpluged the ac, and attempted to power up, the light blinked, and well nothing changed. Still no response to f2 or f12, but now it's doing something strange, the progress barr will get to about 3/4 of the way full, and the computer will restart, and it does over and over and over..... :[]

 

Exact same problem here guys, i've heard of it happening so many times, i think the post above was the only time i've heard of it being fixed. Ive tried everything too but no luck, looks like ill be selling it for parts. never buying dell again :manmad:

Hmmmm I posted a solution here, but Dell I think is censoring the forums for anything anti-Dell. This time I will copy / paste my message to a text file so I can repost it each time :smileywink: . OK here's the scoop. I am an electronics engineer. My accountant brought over his daughter's sick 5160 for me to find out why it would randomly shut off and / or reboot. I traced the problem to this HORRIBLE power connector on the motherboard for the incoming DC power. The connection where it meets the motherboard was BARELY SOLDERED !!!! I could see th pins wiggle in the holes where they should be soldered on ! (I had to completely dismantle the entire laptop to discover this) Anyway I soldered it good and proper, reassembled the unit, (had not all the screws in it yet) powered it up and woila! It works fine. Now I put the screws in it, and for some reason decided to boot it once more before calling my accountant. As you would guess the Dell progress bar went 3/4 and froze. I went back to the last thing I did and unscrewed the hard disk, removed it and plugged it back in without the screws, - booted fine. Put the screws in an tested it again - now is back to going 3/4 and stops. I repeated the last step again but put the screws in but barely tight - it booted, and worked fine. That was 2 weeks ago. He brought it over last night for a software issue, but while I had it this Dell progress bar going 3/4 and stopping resurfaced. :smileymad: I tried everything, even the removing the hard disk trick wouldn't work :smileymad: OK what now? I decided to remove the hard disk, the CDrom drive (there is a screw marked "O" in the middle of bottom releases the CD drive) , I also pulled out the wireless lan card ( rocks out of socket like memory bars ) . Now it made it through. :smileyvery-happy::smileyvery-happy: So now I put all the screws in and guess what :smileymad:??? It goes 3/4 again and stops !!:smileymad: I reverted to the original issue of the power adaptor connection, and put just some slight pressure while the progress bar active, and WOW it boots again !! I tested it over and over, and it still works now....... WHAT A PIECE OF JUNK !!!! ENJOY!!!!:smileyvery-happy:

cheers Dave, ill give it a go this evening!!

Just to clarify. My dell still has the 3/4th bios bar issue but after draining the cmos it booted up. I am now simply keeping it open so that i dont have to deal with it. I would recommend trying a lot of times to boot it up.