Member Avatar for presmark

A power outage shut down my Dell Latitude D800, running XP Sp2. When I powered it back up, it won't get past the black Dell initialization screen. The progress bar gets nearly to the end as usual, but stops short at about 95%. Before, it would complete the bar quickly, then show the XP starting screen. Not anymore.

I can hear no HD activity and the HD light doesn't come on. I've rebooted MANY times, and waited hours, but it doesn't change. I can't get into the BIOS or the boot menu either.

Does this mean my hard drive has crashed? Or is there something I can do? I cannot even get to the BIOS to change the boot choice to CD or Floppy. Now I know why it's not a good idea to alway have the HD first in the boot sequence. :-(

Any ideas?

Thanks, Mark

  • 6 Contributors
  • 5 Replies
  • 126 Views
  • 1 Day Discussion Span
  • Latest Post Latest Post by DimaYasny

Dani AI

Generated

For : the symptom (Dell splash bar hanging near the end, no HD activity, and inability to reach BIOS) points to either a stuck pre-boot/embedded-controller state, a hard drive electronics/power problem, or motherboard/BIOS corruption. Replies from , , and correctly flag hardware as the likely area — below are safe, practical isolation steps not yet covered in the thread so the fault can be narrowed quickly.

  1. Perform a power/embedded-controller reset. Remove the main battery and AC adapter, then press and hold the laptop power button for about 30 seconds. Reconnect AC only and try to power on. This clears residual charge and often gets a hung controller back to a clean POST.

  2. Remove the hard drive and power on with the drive physically absent. If the boot process now proceeds or shows different errors, the drive or its connector is suspect. If it still stalls in the same place, the problem is much more likely the motherboard/BIOS.

  3. Test the drive externally. Using a 2.5" USB adapter or by installing the drive in another computer, verify whether it spins and is recognized. If it spins but is unreadable you can attempt imaging on a working machine; if it does not spin the drive electronics (PCB) are likely dead.

  4. Check the DC jack and AC adapter. A failing adapter or bad jack can cause insufficient power to the drive or to the board and produce similar symptoms. If possible, try a known-good adapter.

If the laptop still will not progress after the drive is removed and you have done the power reset, professional service or Dell support is the practical next step — motherboard or BIOS repair may be required. If data on the drive is critical, avoid many repeated power cycles of the suspect disk and consider cloning or a professional recovery service rather than continued DIY attempts.

Recommended Answers

All 5 Replies

Member Avatar for South59

Power outages are normally not a good thing,you could be looking at some seroius damage,try looking into an apc power supply to prevent this from happening again,mine has battery backup so if the power goes off,i have up to 25 minutes to shut it down properly,as for yours only a tech could be for certain what damages occured during the outage,Tim(South)

Member Avatar for caperjack

I agree totally with South59

Member Avatar for DenisOxon

I don't think so - I suggest motherboard or memory has gone.

Before going to shop, try removing memory and rebooting. If motherboard is working then you will likely get a constant beeping and pc won't boot because it has no memory. IF no beeping then chances are motherboard has a problem.

You could also try removing all cards and rebooting to see if one has gone wrong and is stopping boot process.

Good luck

Denis

Member Avatar for dos_centavos

A power outage shut down my Dell Latitude D800, running XP Sp2. When I powered it back up, it won't get past the black Dell initialization screen. The progress bar gets nearly to the end as usual, but stops short at about 95%. Before, it would complete the bar quickly, then show the XP starting screen. Not anymore.

I can hear no HD activity and the HD light doesn't come on. I've rebooted MANY times, and waited hours, but it doesn't change. I can't get into the BIOS or the boot menu either.

Does this mean my hard drive has crashed? Or is there something I can do? I cannot even get to the BIOS to change the boot choice to CD or Floppy. Now I know why it's not a good idea to alway have the HD first in the boot sequence. :-(

Any ideas?

Thanks, Mark

I would have to agree with DenisOxon - If the HD or Mother Board were indeed fried you would never have gotten to the windows start up screen. So indeed something is being read from the BIOS and the HD. Of course this doesn't mean that some part of the Mother Board hasn't taken a serious hit. Memory is a good place to start. I don't believe the EIDE interface took a hit because from your description it is still operational. Have you tried F8 when you boot to attempt to get into safe mode? One other question - are you using a docking station? If so have you removed it from the docking station and tried to boot?

Member Avatar for DimaYasny

knowing Dell, the white bar is the hardware detection process progress bar. forst thing to try - dosconnect everything externally connected, like usb devices, pull out the PCMCIA cards and the CDROM... everything you can.

if that doesn't help - there is a diagnostic built into dell computers, F10 or F11 on post, you should see that in the top right corner. try to run that

Be a part of the DaniWeb community

We're a friendly, industry-focused community of developers, IT pros, digital marketers, and technology enthusiasts meeting, networking, learning, and sharing knowledge.