Dell Inspiron laptop freezing!!!

[Bachinat0r]

I have this Dell Inspiron laptop that is freezing at the Dell logo screen. when i press f2 to enter setup, it displays the words "entering setup" but it still freezes. if i press f12 to change startup options it still freezes. any suggestions?

 

[lb63640]

How old is the laptop? Which version of Windows?

 

[ArizonaGeek]

How old is the laptop and is there a bios update available. You can go to dell.com and plug in the service tag and find out if there are any updates.

Cheers
Rob

 

[Bachinat0r]

the laptop is around 3 years old. it's running windows xp. there is a bios update available but since the post process freezes, i can't boot off a floppy to flash the bios with the update.

 

[lb63640]

Can you boot from CD to hit the system console and command prompts?

 

[Bachinat0r]

i can't boot from cd or floppy b/c the bios POST process freezes.

 

[CorruptedLogic]

How confident are you at stripping the bad boy down? Sounds to me like either:
a) the keyboard is messed up (did you, or anyone else, spill anything on it...ever?!)

b) the CPU is overheating and locking the system (if it's 3 years old, chances are that a colony of dust bunnies has taken up residence in your fans and exhaust ports and need to be evicted, while you're at it, replace the thermal compound on the CPU).

c) do you have something like an external / removable CDROM drive? if so, pull it out (and any other peripherals like PCMCIA cards etc) and try again..what happens?

d) your battery might be on the fritz. unplug everything, pop out the battery, then try powering up the system from the mains...any different? (you can also usually check the battery condition by using the little button on the side of the battery, in most cases, they have indicator lights which let you know whats going on).

e) your RAM may have come loose, flip the laptop over, locat the little flap the RAM hides under, unscrew it and reseat the RAM (even if it looks good and tight, pull it out and pop it back in again...always observing ESD precautions, naturally!).

f) Your HDD could be on the outs. If nothing else works, pull it out and see if the system will then allow you advance into the BIOS (obviously, when you do this, you will not be able to boot windows until the drive is back in )

Also, if you have access to another PC (which it looks like you do!) check out

http://support.dell.com/support/top...57A7C&treeid=0A5A03E710135D7DE0401E0A55175DEF

That will walk you through troubleshooting the Inspiron.

Good luck!

g) your BIOS may be corrupted.

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