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Blue screened once, then will not boot. I have to trick PC to boot (by removing half memory, then putting back in) - PLEASE HELP
Hi all, my son's Dell Optiplex all-in-one (Inspiron 23 5348 series) blue screened once. It then gave options and my son selected reboot. It would then not boot up at all (power is present as screen will come on in HDMI mode) . Bizarrely, by experimenting we realised that it will boot up ONLY if you go through this process every time:
- remove both RAM
- power up (it gives the beep to say memory not found)
- power off and return one of the memory and power on
- it briefly powers on and then powers off (we worked out that it does this as recognises it has a change in memory)
- power off and add the other memory
- again, briefly powers on but turns off. Power on again and voila all OK and boots Windows
However, if you then power down, it will not power back up unless you go through the above again.
Does anyone have any ideas as I am stumped with this and I need to get it working again for my son's school work. Thank you in advance.
ieee488
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December 11th, 2017 07:00
Reboot your AIO.
Quickly tap the F12 key a few times.
Run Dell Diagnostics.
ieee488
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December 11th, 2017 08:00
If you do get it to boot properly, back up your son's files to a USB flash drive.
alinotty
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December 11th, 2017 08:00
Thank you for your reply.
I will give it a go again, but it didn't come up with anything last time. This is a temperamental issue in that it works fine, then doesn't even boot after the next power down until I go through the process again. I will give it a shot again tonight and get back tomorrow.
Thanks again.
alinotty
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December 11th, 2017 14:00
Hi, I swapped the memory with some I had from a previous upgrade but same thing. I had to swap the memory out for it to boot, it shuts down automatically and then I can reboot. I ran diagnostics and no issues (it is currently running the second part of the diagnostics test. I don’t think it will find anything but will let you know. As soon as I power the PC down, I will need to change the memory and start the above process again. I just do not have a clue what it can be.
ieee488
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December 11th, 2017 16:00
Try updating your BIOS.
alinotty
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December 18th, 2017 07:00
Thank you for this suggestion. It appears to have done the trick. I did it on Friday evening and it has been OK since. I have restarted, shut down and powered on a few times now and it has been fine. Hopefully this has sorted it. Thanks for your suggestion. Have a fab Xmas and New Year. :-)
ieee488
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December 18th, 2017 07:00
I am glad it appears to be working.
But buy an internal hard drive and back up the hard drive. You don't want to lose the data.