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Dell Inspiron 17r boot troubleshooting

HonestSphinx
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I've been doing my best to figure out what or why this is happening but can't find the problem (which I will get to shortly)

 

So here's the backstory of this laptop. It's a Dell Inspiron 17r 5721, it was originally my Grandfather's but he passed away and I started to find all the laptops he had. So I used a um.. 'password reset key' (from Lovell Tec) to first look at the hard drive and it's contents to see if there was anything important or any information left on it that I should try to recover. I found nothing, and couldn't reset the password because it was a windows account, protected by the account password itself. I proceeded to do a fresh install of windows 10 (it was running windows 8/8.1 originally). After doing the install, and entering the windows insider/preview program, the computer was working fine. I downloaded some games and such, doing the normal setup stuff you do for a new device, and ended up getting a secondary drive, replacing the optical drive in the laptop with a SATA drive and adapter for it. Now at this point the computer was working just fine for about a month and a half, during which time I was using it regularly. After I tried making a boot drive for another computer, and not using the laptop for about a week after that, the laptop stopped booting up on the first try. It doesn't turn on properly after about 15 minutes or more of being powered off. 

This is what happens when the laptop is turned on from being 'cold':
I click the button and one of the four lights on the front turns on (the light that indicates that it's powered on), as the light is turning on I can hear the fan ramp up for a minute and the hard drive starting up (no weird or excess noises). Then, after a few seconds, during the time where you would expect to see the computer doing something (like the DELL logo coming onto the screen) nothing happens other than you suddenly hear a shrill beep then two weaker beeps following it (all equally spaced apart but the first is much louder). The laptop continues to beep until you press the power button again and turn it off, at which point if you press the power button again to try to turn it on a second time, it fully boots up and you see the DELL logo, and you get fully into Windows.

 

I've tried pulling one stick of memory, then the other (and replacing the first), I've tried booting it plugged in, unplugged, plugged in with the battery out, I've tried it with removing the second drive, tried putting the optical drive back in, I've tried doing the troubleshooter that is in the bios. 


TLDR; got a laptop from my grandfather passing away, installed Windows 10 (with insider program) and worked fine. After 15-ish minutes of being off, laptop doesn't boot up on the first try and just beeps at you loudly in sets of 3. Turn it off and on again and it works 

 

I know it sounds like it isn't too bad, but when you're trying to turn on your laptop and you have to wait an extra minute to get into it, it's very inconvenient.

 

Thank you in.. is it really in advance at this point?
But thank you anyone who tries to help.

Attached is a video of what happens when I try to do a "cold" boot. (apologies for the bad video quality)

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Posted

Try replacing the cmos battery and see if that helps the issue.

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2 hours ago, HonestSphinx said:

you suddenly hear a shrill beep then two weaker beeps following it (all equally spaced apart but the first is much louder). The laptop continues to beep until you press the power button again and turn it off, at which point if you press the power button again to try to turn it on a second time, it fully boots up and you see the DELL logo, and you get fully into Windows.

Hi, you mention the laptop is beeping, those beeps may indicate what the problem is. Try comparing the number of beeps to the beep code chart on the Parts People website. Also, are you running the latest bios update for your laptop? This issue does seem to be bios related.

 

Sorry about your Grandfather passing away. 

 

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  • 2 weeks later...
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On 8/10/2020 at 10:52 PM, ToolMan said:

Also, are you running the latest bios update for your laptop? This issue does seem to be bios related.

So I just figured out how to check what BIOS I'm using, and I pulled up Dell's page for what bios I'd need if I was to update it, and what I found is that I'm running bios version A14, and was updated on 7/31/2015, but the latest system bios made available for this device is version A12, last updated Nov 4, 2013. 

(screenshots attached for the device and Dell's website)

 

image.png.a877c2ac8d924d2cd0128e3cbbd5db85.png

image.thumb.png.4ae0db7f97ba5beff79ce77730425b71.png

 

I will see if I can update or.. down date? The bios, that might help it out a lot.

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On 8/10/2020 at 8:03 PM, ShrimpBrime said:

Try replacing the cmos battery and see if that helps the issue.

 

On 8/10/2020 at 10:52 PM, ToolMan said:

This issue does seem to be bios related.

So for some reason, after I looked at what BIOS I was running, looked at DELL's website, and was considering trying to flash the bios, (it's now been about a week I think) I guess it felt threatened by me or somethin. (jk)

But after I looked at it and thought about it, the beeping and failure to boot up stopped happening and it starts up perfectly fine now (also after a windows insider update. Maybe that's what fixed it?) 

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17 minutes ago, HonestSphinx said:

 

So for some reason, after I looked at what BIOS I was running, looked at DELL's website, and was considering trying to flash the bios, (it's now been about a week I think) I guess it felt threatened by me or somethin. (jk)

But after I looked at it and thought about it, the beeping and failure to boot up stopped happening and it starts up perfectly fine now (also after a windows insider update. Maybe that's what fixed it?) 

Electronics dont magically repair themselves. Something caused the issue more likely hardware related.

 

But glad its working.  Let's hope it stays that way a while.

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  • 2 weeks later...
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21 hours ago, HonestSphinx said:

I found another person who had a similar problem, with a similar device, (https://forums.tomsguide.com/threads/laptop-only-turns-on-after-second-attempt-to-turning-it-on.122083/) I'll try turning off fast startup and get back with the results in a bit.

 

Negative on that, my laptop doesn't have the option to turn on or off fast startup 

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On 9/4/2020 at 8:57 AM, HonestSphinx said:

Negative on that, my laptop doesn't have the option to turn on or off fast startup 

My bad, didn't realize it's not in the bios, it's in windows, turned it off and I'll see how it does.

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