Not being able to get into bios or your OS sometimes would suggest 2 things;
- Your MBR has become hard to read - assuming you have an MBR disk.
- Your bios is becoming hard to read
I would start by running these commands if you can get a CMD prompt open. NOTE: They may take a long time to complete - like hours if it is real bad.
chkdsk c: /f This will check your disk for errors
SFC /scannow This will check your system files
These will do things SFC can't
DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /CheckHealth
DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /ScanHealth
DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth
If none of that helps, try to create an image if you can get it booted up. Macrium Reflect Free is my go to program.
It may or may not work depending on it being able to read that MBR and the rest of the disk. If it does not work at first keep trying as it will reduce the pain if other things don't work. If you have just a C: drive, this will also provide a backup of all your stuff. If you have more than one partition on the hard drive, image the other partitions separately.
Then I would try to rewrite the MBR - this is the short answer but you can search for longer answers
To rewrite an MBR (Master Boot Record), you can use the "bootrec" command in the Windows recovery environment, accessible through a boot disk or recovery USB, by navigating to the Command Prompt and typing commands like "bootrec /FixMbr" to repair the MBR on the selected disk; this process is typically used when the MBR is corrupted and needs to be overwritten with a fresh copy.
If that doesn't work, and you successfully created an image, try to restore it.
If that doesn't work, replace the hard drive and restore the image to the new drive. If you have other partition images, restore those also.
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Hi @jeff___
Please clarify "when I boot into bios then exit it works. This only sometimes works and sometimes I am unable to boot into BIOS altogether."
Is it necessary to boot into BIOS to get the laptop to boot into the OS or when it doesn't boot into the OS (without trying to get into BIOS) you can't get into BIOS then either on a restart?
Did you have the battery disconnected from the motherboard when you changed/swapped ram etc?
- de jayeff
When the laptop will not boot, I have to restart it and attempt to boot into BIOS. When I am able to then I exit BIOS and usually it works after that. Other times, I am unable to get into BIOS altogether, or booting after exiting is ineffective.
When the laptop won't boot into the OS then sometimes booting into BIOS works, if I am able to get into BIOS.
Yes I did disconnect and reconnect the battery when changing the RAM for my safety and the safety of the hardware, and I double-checked before I closed the laptop and a few days after that I had plugged it back in properly, which I have.
@jayeff
- de jeff
@jeff___
What happens after you start the laptop and you can't get into BIOS e.g. fan, lights on keyboard, power light etc on of off or nothing at all.
What's the history of the laptop i.e., was dropped, got wet, unknown, worked OK before to your knowledge?
- de jayeff
@jayeff
When I can't get into BIOS, there is no fan sound but the screen and boot lights (charging port & caps lock) illuminate temporarily, then the screen is on the boot screen (with the Dell logo) and no loading circle. When I press F2 on boot there is a string of text on the top-right corner that says "preparing to enter BIOS setup" and the bloe loading bar stuck at about 1/4.
- de jeff