Thanks for your advice. I rang the helpline again, and miraculously the laptop worked again during the call!! This led to the technician concluding that I needed to re-install Windows, despite evidence to the contrary when it previouslt failed to boot.
By the time the next technician rang a few days later to talk through the Windows re-install, the laptop was misbehaving again, so he conculded it needed a new motherboard (that would be the fourth...).
When the on-site technician came out to fit the motherboard, he simply removed and re-seated the memory instead, and it has worked every time since (only two days, but looking promising...). He advised against replacing the motherboard, as it wasn't necessary and it was refurbished, not new (presumably the other two replacements have been refurbished items too...).
Thankfully I didn't have to go down the route of wiping the hard disk etc. etc. Anyone else experiencing similar boot problems should probably check their memory is installed correctly first before following any other course of action.
Update - the laptop won't boot reliably at all now. Very occasionally I get through to logging on to windows, but then BSOD. "Bad Pool Caller" or something. BSOD even from safe mode.
Most of the time it won't even boot - black screen. Sometimes I get the Dell logo, and once even that was replaced by a tiny "x" ! Maybe it's trying to tell me something!!
If you can't even get the Dell logo it is most definitely hardware failure (as you haven't got software kicking into play at that point). Contact the technician again.
jasper_studio_laptop
3 Posts
1
October 27th, 2011 14:00
Hi,
Thanks for your advice. I rang the helpline again, and miraculously the laptop worked again during the call!! This led to the technician concluding that I needed to re-install Windows, despite evidence to the contrary when it previouslt failed to boot.
By the time the next technician rang a few days later to talk through the Windows re-install, the laptop was misbehaving again, so he conculded it needed a new motherboard (that would be the fourth...).
When the on-site technician came out to fit the motherboard, he simply removed and re-seated the memory instead, and it has worked every time since (only two days, but looking promising...). He advised against replacing the motherboard, as it wasn't necessary and it was refurbished, not new (presumably the other two replacements have been refurbished items too...).
Thankfully I didn't have to go down the route of wiping the hard disk etc. etc. Anyone else experiencing similar boot problems should probably check their memory is installed correctly first before following any other course of action.
Thanks again, hope this is of help to others.
jasper_studio_laptop
3 Posts
0
October 16th, 2011 13:00
Update - the laptop won't boot reliably at all now. Very occasionally I get through to logging on to windows, but then BSOD. "Bad Pool Caller" or something. BSOD even from safe mode.
Most of the time it won't even boot - black screen. Sometimes I get the Dell logo, and once even that was replaced by a tiny "x" ! Maybe it's trying to tell me something!!
Can this really be a software error!!??
Any ideas anyone please?
Philip_Yip
9 Legend
•
16.1K Posts
0
October 17th, 2011 00:00
If you can't even get the Dell logo it is most definitely hardware failure (as you haven't got software kicking into play at that point). Contact the technician again.