Windows Vista Dell Inspiron 530, Home Premium... Failure to Boot

This is a co-worker's computer I've been given to repair. I do not have all the system stats available, I'm sorry. That being said...

At power-on, I receive the Dell splash screen. In the top right hand corner, I have a notce of "F2 = Setup, F12 = Boot Menu." Below the logo in the center of the screen is "BIOS Revision 1.0.5." The computer than proceeds to lock up, and the keyboard is unresponsive. A single beep was made when the computer powered on.

I don't personally have any tools that I know of that can help me diagnose this. Does anyone have a utility or tool that I should start with?

 

No.

I can't get far enough into the boot to press F8. Can't get to Last Good, or Safe Mode.

The keyboard is unresponsive. Pressing F2 does nothing. I cannot get into the BIOS configuration screens.

 

The day you told me to get the diagnostics, I went to classes with the computer, and plugged it in to run them. However, the machine booted without incident. Wasn't even slow.

Took me almost a week to figure this out: I had to plug a USB keyboard and mouse directly into it. It just won't boot without either.

The weirdest thing was, I have a KVM switch at work. One USB cable functions to connect both my workstation's keyboard and mouse to the switched computer. But this dell wasn't recognizing it.

Is that a behavior anyone's seen in a system before? I reimage systems as part of my jobs, so I've used that KVM switch on dozens of computers now, without having this kind of error booting. (Then again, I have not seen a tower without at least one leftover PS/2 port... This system was the first one without a single PS/2 port.)

I've identified the problem, and technically resolved it... I just don't understand the *Why* of it yet. Anyone able to educate me?

 

Hi CUIStech...

Glad it all worked out.

Our company uses Dell products and part of my job is to maintain all the PC's\Laptops\Workstations. All our Dell's have a Dell partition with the "Dell Diagnostics Utility" installed on it.

To access all you have to due is Press the F12 key for the Boot Menu then from the Menu choose "Diagnostics ". Once it starts it does a Pre-Boot System Assessment...it basically goes through a quick check on all the Hardware (Memory, Video Card, etc). Once it finishes it's pre-boot test it will ask you to "Press Any key to Continue" and boot into the Dell Diagnostic Utility Partition. Once in the utility you can it will give you a screen with options... "Express Test ", "Extended Test ", "Custom Test ", and "Symptom Tree ". It also loads a mouse driver so your able to use your mouse or if Laptop at Touchpad.

A couple weeks ago I ran a "Custom Test" on the RAM on a Dell Precision Workstation and it helped me find a bad stick.

HTH...

 

I hade an identical problem with the same type of computer. It wasn't letting my press f8 or f2 or f12, and would just pause on the dell splash screen. I fixed mine by turning the compuer on, letting it get there, then I just pulled the power plug. I turned it back on, and it was just fixed. I don't know why, but I think it had to do with the keyboard issue like you had, and somehow it was reset when I turned the power off improperly.