Dell Inspiron 1720 - Refuses to Boot

[M.Courneya]

Hello,

I'm new here, and only hope that this is the right forum. I'm having a bit of trouble with my Inspiron 1720. It worked fine after I received it for quite a few months, but about two weeks ago, the system stopped booting. Every time I power it on, I get the motherboard screen, with the option of accessing the BIOS and running Diagnostics, and then it goes black before Windows ever even appears and remains that way until I force it to shut down (I've let it sit for over six hours, and it remained black).

I've tried powering it on with and without the battery, and haven't tried swapping out the memory, because the diagnostics test said that the memory was functioning correctly. I suspect the board itself might need to be replaced, but was hoping for a second opinion.

Thanks in advance!

 

[Harvey]

It could be a failed or corrupted hard drive, a virus.

Have you tried booting to the installation/recovery CD? If you don't have it, try to borrow a bootable Windows CD or any other bootable CD (anti-virus, etc.) just to see if it boots. That would at least tell you if the basic system is working.

If your machine has a floppy drive, you could also try booting to DOS just to see if it works.

Good luck.

 

[KillerBee]

It sounds like it may be defaulting to using the external display port
Have you tried plugging in an external monitor?
or try ...
Press <Fn><F8> to switch the video image between the display only, the
external device only, or the display and the external device simultaneously.

 

[M.Courneya]

The system seems to boot to a CD. The External Display does nothing. Think its a Hard Drive issue?

 

[Harvey]

The system seems to boot to a CD. The External Display does nothing. Think its a Hard Drive issue?

It boots to a CD, and it shows you the startup screen, so that sounds like the most likely possibility, at least that you could repair inexpensively. I hope your data is backed up.

Some things you can try:

1. Remove the drive and connect it as a slave to another machine. You can use an adapter like this one that connects almost any SATA or PATA notebook or desktop drive to a USB port. Even if the boot info is corrupted, you may be able to read the data and save your critical files.

If you can save your files to another drive, you can then try to format it and re-install Windows. Or, better yet, since that machine probably came with Vista, if Dell provides Win 7 drivers, download them, and move on to a better, faster OS.

The worst that can happen is that it won't work, and you can move on to trying the same thing on a new drive. You can pick up a SATA notebook drive of the same size or larger for under $45.

2. If Windows won't install on your drive, and you have access to another drive, you can temporarily install the second drive and see if you can install Windows. If the base installation boots, you'll know your original drive is bad.

 

[M.Courneya]

I can't say for sure what the problem was, but I removed the hard drive and connected it to my main PC and was able to save any files that I didn't have backed up. Afterward, I installed Ubuntu and it booted just fine. Probably a problem with the MBR? In any case, thanks for all your help!