my dell latitude e6420 screen goes blank when it has to boot

Hi notyme,

Welcome to the Community.

Unplug the adapter and the battery. Press and hold power button for 20 seconds. Plugin the adapter. Press and hold “Fn” key while turning on the system. Hold it down until the diagnostic starts. For more information click the link mentioned below:

http://dell.to/RO1v0p

Please refer to the link mentioned below for information on error codes:

http://dell.to/12IFoz8

Thanks & Regards
Manshu S
#iworkfordell

hello DELL-MANSHU 

am very grateful for the response. i tried what u said...at the logo boot...it showed "entering diagnostics" but right after the Dell logo screen goes, the screen stays blank forever.

only places the screen displays is there Dell logo and only if i choose to enter BOIS setting..

i also release the single USB port on the left side and the e-SATA port  do not respond when i placed a bootable usb drive in them to try to run windows. the other 2 usb ports by the e-SATA port responded but when i choose to boot from the flash drive, screen goes blank and stays blank forever .please me!!!!!!!!! 

Hi Mansu

I have the exact same problem  with Dell E6420  it goes to Dell Logo  i can use F2  and F12  ,

I does detect the hard Drive,  i have change the bios to default ,  Still no help

I have Pressed F12  , and chose dignostics ,  allso boot from Cd  still blanck screen after that

I have tried external display its still the same

 

Thanks

Harinder

 

Hi Harinder,

As you mentioned that you are able to open one time boot menu, I would suggest you to perform diagnostics on the system to check if it is a hardware issue.

Also, you may refer to the link mentioned below:

http://dell.to/19UfI4w

Thanks & Regards
Manshu S
#iworkfordell

Hi Manshu, 

i can go into one time boot  menu but as soon as  i select any option is goes blank  and does not respond 

Hi Harinder,

It seems to be an issue with the system board.

I have added you as a friend. Please accept my friend request by clicking on my name highlighted in blue and then click on “Friends” tab at the top and then click on “Request to Review” and finally click on “Accept” button.

I am sending you a private message as well. Click on “Inbox” to respond to the message and provide system’s Service Tag and name listed on the account so I may access your system records and check for further course of action. You could also click on Start Conversation to send a private message.

Thanks & Regards
Manshu S
#iworkfordell

Hello Mr Manshu,

I have similar problem with my dell E6420,  This morning, after leaving the computer in standby mode, I came back about an hour later to a computer that would not come back into operation. After turning it off and trying to restart it, it shows there is power to the system, but the hard drive doesn't work (the hard drive light flickers just once after I hit the power button, then goes dark). The power source is working fine.

I've tried rebooting and hitting F2 or F1 multiple times to try to get into BIOS and reset the boot order so I could use a recovery CD, but I can't even get into BIOS. Literally nothing ever comes up on the monitor.

Do you have any advice to get it into operation again?

Cheers

Mauro

Hi Mauro,

I recommend you to remove static charge. For that remove the battery and disconnect the ac adapter, press and hold the power button for 20 to 30 seconds. Now connect only the ac adapter and wait for 30 seconds and turn on the system. This will drain any residual charge in the capacitors.
Also check if you can run diagnostics on the hardware components of the system. Press and hold the Fn key on the keyboard and power on the computer to launch diagnostics. Refer to the following link for assistance:

http://dell.to/16KQ3r0

Reply to the post in case of any error message.

Hello there,

I have the same problem with my 1.5 year old e6420.

I have tried removing static charges. Still behaves the same.

I am able to go to BIOS settings. But, unable to boot from any of the bootable partions.

Also, seemed like it is not able to boot from any device.

Tried booting from a bootable CD and also a bootable USB. Nothing works.

When tried to run Diagnostics, many a times it stay endlessly on the menu where we select the option for Diagnostics.

But, sometimes I see that it actually go to Diagnostic and run the tests. It show me no error.

When I say it stuck on Diagnostic menu option, I have to force shut it down (by pressing power button) to again try for menu options.

Please help me how can I recover my laptop.

I did not see any proper solution in this post or any other post on internet for the same issue to other people.

Hi vaishnav_ravi,

I would suggest you to reset the BIOS to factory defaults. To reset, follow the steps below:

• Power on the system and tap at the ‘Dell’ logo
• Click ‘Load Defaults’ to reset default BIOS settings.
• Click ‘OK’when the pop-up box appears.
• Click ‘Apply’ and ‘Exit’

Hope this helps. Feel free to reply for any further assistance.

Same exact issue im dealing with over here. Obviously a common issue with these dell e6420. Still no solutions guys?  Anyone try upgrading the BIOS? Removing the CMOS Battery? Anything?

I am going to try removing CMOS battery, then I will try upgrading the BIOS. I will report back if i find an answer.

And if anyone has found an answer please post for all of us to save our computers! Thanks. 

Ok, So I went and upgraded the BIOS to A19 (originally was A05).   Before i did that, I unplugged the CMOS battery with no success at all. Then I upgraded the Bios. Luckily this computer occasionally boots up. Once every 50 tries or so. 

I was also able to do full extended diagnostics on the hardware and it found absolutely no problems. 

However when I rebooted it went to black screen right away. (no matter which media i try, USB boot, CD/DVD boot, HDD boot, Diagnostic boot, NOTHING WORKS! (except for on rare occasion). 

Dell and their defective motherboards.. really sucks sometimes to have an expensive laptop turn to be absolutely worthless no more than year and half old.  same thing happened with an xps i had a couple years back. no more than a year and half old and stopped turning on (motherboard issue)and a inspiron like 5 years ago died and would not turn on. each time motherboard issues.(designed to fail after warranty period? idk...)

ANY ONE FIND A SOLUTION YET? I am going to buy another board as i see this is my only solution. :(

Hello Kencamo,

Luckily, now everything works well on my machine.

I guess, it could be the Master Boot Record issue. Below is how I came to this conclusion.

The suggestion (from Dell Support) to reset BIOS to defaults did not work.

My case was same as yours. After about 50 tries, once it used to boot properly.

I saw that, once it boots, if we just leave the laptop in suspend/sleep mode, then it can come back quickly. 

The issue come back only if we go for a shutdown/reboot/hibernate mode where the OS has to be loaded again into RAM.

In case of sleep, the power to RAM is always ON, so the boot process does not come in picture.

During these issues, once I thought that it could be related to Windows.

So, I installed Ubuntu on one of the partitions and then I had dual OS on my machine. After this, I always tried to boot into Ubuntu. 

I still had issue of once proper boot after about 50 tries.

Meanwhile I got an update for Ubuntu (13.10) which upgraded the whole OS along with the "grub" or Master Boot Record.

And this seemed to fix the issue. 

Now, I never boot into Windows. And I think it got corrupted somehow. I don't care of it anymore.

I would suggest you to first take backup of all your data on the machine and then try to google if you can find any program which can fix the boot partition.

Or, wipe the Hard disk and try to install the whole of OS again.

I don't know if this is a correct solution. Because once I realized that this was not a software issue at all.

I remember one more thing I did during all these experiments.

I identified the SATA drive to which my HDD is connected (SATA1).

Then in the BIOS, I disabled all SATA drives except SATA1 and boot into OS.

I was still seeing the same issue though. 

Now, after everything works well, I enabled all SATA drives again in BIOS and still it works well.

I don't know what could have solved the issue. But this is what I did (tried my best for correcting both Hardware and Software).

And now, it works.

As you are anyways thinking to buy a new board, try everything you can (if you have time and patience).

See if anything works.

And if you find anything specific, please update the post.

So that the Dell support guys will learn something from our experiments and the same could be helpful for others.

-- Vaishnav

happy to hear you got your computer working again. however, i dont think this fix applies to my issue. I am unable to boot to anything other than Bios setup. (cant boot from bootable windows dvd, bootable flash drive, not even diagnostics).  except for the rare occasion everything works.

and i notice its kinda weird when it does happen to finally work. the computer seems like it shuts itself off before the dell splash screen, then 2 seconds later it comes back on automatically then it loads splash screen then boots into windows. which is very odd. this seems like a completely defective board just by the way it behaves (comes on turns off, then comes on again this is when it boots). every other time i press the button and it comes right on as it normally should however, once it passes the dell screen, the screen just stays black. you can tell it stopped responding because when you press the caps lock button the light does not turn on/off. which means the machine freezes at this specific spot. 

and like i said before it will not boot to any device. i did everything possible to try to isolate this issue....and it is pointing to either motherboard or cpu. (99.99% of the time it is the motherboard, cpu rarely goes bad).