Member Avatar for w3design

My Dell Inspiron 1526 won't restore after hibernation.

After a recent Vista update the laptop was placed in hibernation mode before the normal 'restart to complete update' process. After a minute or so i press a button expecting to see a logon screen, instead the monitor was off, blank screen with no power. I presss every button but nothing happened. After a restart the monitor remains off but i can still hear 1526 checking the cd drive. I restarted several times trying the Fn+F8 option with an external monitor and pressing the up button while holding Fn but still the same.

1526 appear to be in a wierd state because i placed XP boot cd and restart then hit Enter several times. If the monitor was the only problem then 1526 would boot from the cd as normal. It doesn't, it simply boot, checks the cd drive then does nothing.

The multimedia buttons lights up when i press them and the fan is on.

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by chrishea
Member Avatar for peejay6459

I also have the same issue. I'm able to get it boot up and run perfectly sometimes, after two hours of turning it on and off and holding down a few buttons like F8 or Fn. I even tried holding down Del button and was able to run memory diagnostics a couple of times during different days. But right now, it seems like holding down the Del upon start up does not seem to work anymore. I left it turned on for an hour but still nothing comes up. Tried re-seating the RAM(I'm not sure if that would be of any help). Also tried taking out the hard drive and putting it back in. Still does not show anything on the screen. I hope some body comes up for a solution for this. If I get it to boot up again, I guess I'll try uninstalling the update last 10-18-2009.

Member Avatar for lewisa16

I am having the same problem; however, when mine finally does boot up I receive an error stating that my BIOS time/date is not set and have to reset these everytime it actually boots up.

Member Avatar for Bob_180_Bob

lewisa16, This post is 27 days old...Your battery could be flat and not keeping the details in the BIOS. They often last for years but maybe it was a bad one to start with. They are not too expensive, compared to resetting the date and time every boot.

Edited by Bob_180_Bob because: n/a
Member Avatar for chrishea

Start-up problems where the system won't get through the POST process are usually caused by some sort of hardware issue. Hibernation and maybe being in the middle of the update restart process may complicate it. I have an HP laptop and my problem started when I put it into hibernation mode and it wouldn't recover. If your machine is set to restart after an error, then it may just keep shutting down and restarting in an endless loop.

In HP laptops, there are problems with the solder connections to the NVidia video card caused in whole or in part by high heat. The system detects a problem and won't finish the boot. Dell's may not have this exact issue but you could have a similar heat-related problem or it might be some other type of hardware-related problem.

I suggest that you try re-seating your memory cards and maybe even try starting with just one and then the other (if you have two). You can also try re-seating the hard drive. Besides my main problem which is probably solder-related, I still have situations (as recently as yesterday) where I have to re-seat my hard drive to get the machine going. I have two drives and this only seems to happen with the newer one.

I will provide a link to my blow-by-blow problem and partial resolution below. I have been able to continue using the machine by re-booting holding down the DEL key until I get the vendor logo. Then the boot will continue normally unless my hard drive needs to be re-seated. In that case, it never leaves the logo and shuts down after 15 or 20 seconds. With that situation, I am still able to boot from my Windows install disk and that's a clue that the hard drive is an issue. Sometimes it takes multiple tries with the DEL key before it gets past the problem and I have to shut it down fully before starting again (it won't work if it is just restarting itself). I haven't heard that this DEL key approach has worked for other people (prior to the item above) so you can try it but it may not work for you. I now keep my machine hot by letting it run 7/24. I turned off sleep and hibernate and just let it power down the screen and hard drive when I'm not using it. As long as it's still hot, I don't have a problem rebooting. The real solution in my case is probably to pull it apart and "re-flow" the solder on the video card connections but I've been putting that off.

Hope that this is of some value and good luck getting your machine restarted.

The link:My Experience

Edited by chrishea because: n/a
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