The fact that it does not beep with the RAM pulled is a concern. Have you tried to replace the CMOS battery yet. That system has a few years on it and the battery could need replacement. If that does not help I would lean toward a bad motherboard.
Thanks for the tip. I swapped out the CMOS battery with a known good one but unfortunately there was no change in behavior. It would be a shame if it is indeed the motherboard that is the issue.
@U2CAMEB4ME Thanks for the link, but I think my symptoms are a bit different from the ones in that forum post. My computer powers on and seems to function except for the fact that it does not boot or hit the dell spash screen. The keyboard backlight and fan both turn on when the laptop is powered.
If I remove the memory and put it back in, it will boot fine. Power it down, it will not boot. Remove the memory and put the memory back it boots again.
I hope you can help me fix my currently computer problem and hopefully create a super human bootable flash drive with the tools to repair this issue and others problems in the future. We can then share this information with others and a lot of us with limited computer knowledge will have be able to live much less frustrating lives.
Background:
I am a retired senior with a tiny income that relies on a few sites to download tv and movie content.
I am pretty much assured my computer will crash every 4 to 6 months at which time I may be able to
repair it, wipe it with a D ban type program or buy a new hard drive. The media is crucial to my existence. I'm having one of these moments now.
Computer
Dell Latitude 6420 with i5 processor, 8 gigs ram and 240 gig standard HD. I tether my computer to a large Hisense smart television and with a 90mbps connection am generally happy.
The currently issue begin with needing to disconnect the tv to allow the computer to boot. I progressed to needing to find some disk or flash drive to make it boot then getting out of that program. The best solution was to never turn off the computer. I managed to repair a problem of no boot in the past year. I have no idea what commands I used but it involved rebuilding a boot program and MBR I believe.
The computer now turns on briefly flashes the windows logo the bar loads and it goes to a blank screen with no lights or noises. I can occasionally get it into boot setup of general bios with no success in booting to windows. I have managed to get it to display no boot device.
I attempted to build a bootable usb flash drive with repair tools but got lost near the end and was unsuccessful.
I have a 64 gig onan flash drive. Big enough to be able to create a fat32 drive required to boot uefi which my computer has
a downloaded iso file of windows 10 pro spring 2020 edition.
AOMEI partition tool program which I believe I did partition the drive.
A windows 10 factory program on usb that computer usually doesn't recognize.
The goal is to create a way to resolve boot errors, capable of loading a new version of windows plus a variety of repair tools and even maybe a copy of Dban to wipe a HD if necessary
The drive will need to be created on a older dell laptop with windows celeron 3.2 duo core 3 gigs ram and windows vista operating system.
This issue is a little outdated but I believe I had a similar issue that may have a different cause, but it could help others.
After some simple work inside a Latitude E5440, I was ready to boot it up. To my surprise the laptop turned on by its own whenever AC or battery were connected, but the laptop did not respond to power button events, the white power on LED wasn't on, display was completely off, fan was also off, and the caps lock LED was also off. The only thing telling me "Hey I'm still alive" was the DVD drive that started to spin up because I left a silly CD in there.
So I disconnected it from AC and battery, and proceeded to take out the DVD drive, do a hard restart with CMOS battery out while pressing the power button for several seconds (more that 15 thats for sure). Once done I did not return the drive to its place, instead I reassembled everything else, reconnected the CMOS battery and pressed the power button...
A strange sequence of the laptop rebooting itself, resembling the one you describe above showed up:
After pressing the power on button , the power on LED was bright as normal and the fan was spinning too, the display was off, but the laptop powered down ( after 5 seconds or so)
It restarted by its own a second time, the power on LED was on and the fan started to spin up again, the display was also off. The laptop was on a little bit more than before and then, restarted itself again.
Once it was on again, the display turned on and the POST process started as normal.
After that I needed to reassign some configuration in the setup menu. But it solved my problem.
Did you notice any blinking pattern in the 4 LEDs in the front of the laptop? Those might have told you what was going on.
JOcean
9 Legend
•
12.6K Posts
1
January 10th, 2020 16:00
The fact that it does not beep with the RAM pulled is a concern. Have you tried to replace the CMOS battery yet. That system has a few years on it and the battery could need replacement. If that does not help I would lean toward a bad motherboard.
U2CAMEB4ME
4 Operator
•
6.2K Posts
0
January 11th, 2020 07:00
Welcome to the Dell Community @ForanJo
E5xxx and E7xxx No Power Dead Possible Engineering Defect???
https://www.dell.com/community/Latitude/E5xxx-and-E7xxx-No-Power-Dead-Possible-Engineering-Defect/m-p/7300303#M12411
Best regards,
U2
ForanJo
1 Rookie
•
14 Posts
0
January 13th, 2020 13:00
Thanks for the tip. I swapped out the CMOS battery with a known good one but unfortunately there was no change in behavior. It would be a shame if it is indeed the motherboard that is the issue.
ForanJo
1 Rookie
•
14 Posts
0
January 13th, 2020 13:00
@U2CAMEB4ME Thanks for the link, but I think my symptoms are a bit different from the ones in that forum post. My computer powers on and seems to function except for the fact that it does not boot or hit the dell spash screen. The keyboard backlight and fan both turn on when the laptop is powered.
AnsariAasif
1 Message
0
February 16th, 2020 10:00
I have the same issue. Did you find any solution?
ForanJo
1 Rookie
•
14 Posts
0
February 18th, 2020 09:00
AnsariAasif, Unfortunately I think the issue was the Motherboard. I was not able to get the computer to respond to any troubleshooting that I tried.
MD81
3 Posts
0
April 29th, 2020 12:00
I am having a similar issue.
If I remove the memory and put it back in, it will boot fine. Power it down, it will not boot. Remove the memory and put the memory back it boots again.
Ideas?
Thanks!
auctionsco
1 Message
0
July 18th, 2020 03:00
Hello
I hope you can help me fix my currently computer problem and hopefully create a super human bootable flash drive with the tools to repair this issue and others problems in the future. We can then share this information with others and a lot of us with limited computer knowledge will have be able to live much less frustrating lives.
Background:
I am a retired senior with a tiny income that relies on a few sites to download tv and movie content.
I am pretty much assured my computer will crash every 4 to 6 months at which time I may be able to
repair it, wipe it with a D ban type program or buy a new hard drive. The media is crucial to my existence. I'm having one of these moments now.
Computer
Dell Latitude 6420 with i5 processor, 8 gigs ram and 240 gig standard HD. I tether my computer to a large Hisense smart television and with a 90mbps connection am generally happy.
The currently issue begin with needing to disconnect the tv to allow the computer to boot. I progressed to needing to find some disk or flash drive to make it boot then getting out of that program. The best solution was to never turn off the computer. I managed to repair a problem of no boot in the past year. I have no idea what commands I used but it involved rebuilding a boot program and MBR I believe.
The computer now turns on briefly flashes the windows logo the bar loads and it goes to a blank screen with no lights or noises. I can occasionally get it into boot setup of general bios with no success in booting to windows. I have managed to get it to display no boot device.
I attempted to build a bootable usb flash drive with repair tools but got lost near the end and was unsuccessful.
I have a 64 gig onan flash drive. Big enough to be able to create a fat32 drive required to boot uefi which my computer has
a downloaded iso file of windows 10 pro spring 2020 edition.
AOMEI partition tool program which I believe I did partition the drive.
An UltraIso program
KB3AIK_EN.iso program
PAssist_Std.exe
Windows AIK
A windows 10 factory program on usb that computer usually doesn't recognize.
The goal is to create a way to resolve boot errors, capable of loading a new version of windows plus a variety of repair tools and even maybe a copy of Dban to wipe a HD if necessary
The drive will need to be created on a older dell laptop with windows celeron 3.2 duo core 3 gigs ram and windows vista operating system.
Can anyone assist us build this?
Thank you
nyc10036
4 Operator
•
5.6K Posts
0
July 18th, 2020 09:00
@auctionsco
Why didn't you start your own thread ?
Anyway, the laptop has a failing hard drive. Replace it.
.
Therga
1 Message
0
March 30th, 2021 09:00
I'm having same challenge now... How did you fix yours?
Screen stays black throughout and fan runs for about 2 secs before self-powering down itself and that's all
JesusDelgadillo
1 Message
0
March 20th, 2022 18:00
This issue is a little outdated but I believe I had a similar issue that may have a different cause, but it could help others.
After some simple work inside a Latitude E5440, I was ready to boot it up. To my surprise the laptop turned on by its own whenever AC or battery were connected, but the laptop did not respond to power button events, the white power on LED wasn't on, display was completely off, fan was also off, and the caps lock LED was also off. The only thing telling me "Hey I'm still alive" was the DVD drive that started to spin up because I left a silly CD in there.
So I disconnected it from AC and battery, and proceeded to take out the DVD drive, do a hard restart with CMOS battery out while pressing the power button for several seconds (more that 15 thats for sure). Once done I did not return the drive to its place, instead I reassembled everything else, reconnected the CMOS battery and pressed the power button...
A strange sequence of the laptop rebooting itself, resembling the one you describe above showed up:
After that I needed to reassign some configuration in the setup menu. But it solved my problem.
Did you notice any blinking pattern in the 4 LEDs in the front of the laptop? Those might have told you what was going on.