Dell N7110 cant boot, goes in circles with boot screen

[sonoferu]

Help, please? My wife's Dell Inspiron N7110, Windows 7, a year and a half old with no problems ever, now wont boot. It worked a couple hours ago, then she went out, just came back and it's like this:

On the right side above the keyboard, there are 3 small square lights, left to right they are
#1. with 2 tiny gears, like the icon for Windows Services
#2. with a circle and a tiny wrench inside
#3 with a little "monitor" icon.
When you start it, #1 comes on by itself, then #2 by itself, then #3 by itself, then #2, then #1 and it stays on. Then 2 comes on [with 1 still on] and finally 3 comes on so all are now on. Then they all go out and the Dell boot screen with the Logo on it comes up, saying F2 for Setup, F12 Boot for options, then it goes black for a short while, then everything starts over.

F2 gets no response, and F12 shows a little flat cursor at the top left of the screen, for a few seconds, thats all. Looks like the cursor you get, where I remember you could hit - I think it was the F8 key - and get the windows boot options like Most Recent Good Boot or whatever. but I cant get anything to happen from that, and it goes away and the cycle starts over.

As it starts up, I never hear any beeps.

I'm searching google for any clues or tips, anyone here have anything for us?

Thanks

sonoferu

 

[JWade]

try reseating the ram/switching it out, if two sticks are in it, taking one out and trying it, then trying the other one by itself?

 

[sonoferu]

I popped the two sticks out and in, but not one at a time yet. I will try that next

 

[sonoferu]

Also, an odd thing to mention.

She said she was using it earlier in the day, no problem. I came home while she was out, and noticed it sitting on her desk, cycling through the boot stuff described. She isnt up yet, to ask just now, but the presumption is that she left it running, which is normal. It goes to sleep and she wakes it up next time she sits down. So if she left it running, it went into the repeating boot routine by itself? I dont think she would hit Restart and walk away and not notice the repeat boot attempts. I gotta ask her about that too

 

[sonoferu]

OK, tried the memory one stick at a time. No luck.

I did note, however, that when I put the second one in by itself, I got 2 beeps, which I have read on the web that means bad RAM. I reseated it and got no more beeps, so that indicates RAM is NOT the issue.

One more thing I am curious about, knowing little about the boot process. When the Dell logo comes on, and the little progress bar runs across, it fails just at the moment the bar finishes. Playing around with the F2 and F12 keys, and the Fn key [I read on one website something about that key doing something], I found if I held all 3 down when the boot logo came on, the progress bar stopped about 3/4 of the way along. It would stay there indefinitely, even after I let go of all the keys. The moment I hit either F2 or F12 after that, the progress bar finished and the whole thing went back into its circliing pattern.

Probably means nothing.

My guess is the hard drive is the problem. The boot logo is from the BIOS, right? Then the actual boot to windows needs the HD .... boot sector is it called?

 

[sonoferu]

I tried several CDs that I thought it might boot from. One is the Windows 7 install disk that my own desktop came from, one is the reinstall disk for XP that came with her previous Dell, and a boot disk from EaseUS, a backup utility I use. All of them spin up at the beginning of a boot repeat cycle, then never do anything. So is that the boot sector? Is that where the laptop looks for a bootable OS on the HD, and then on the CD, or whatever order it uses?

 

[VirtualLarry]

It does seem like the problem could be the hdd. See if it boots the Win7 DVD if you remove the hdd totally.

 

[Ketchup]

It sounds like the hard drive to me as well. I have seen a system the acted totally befuddled until I took out the failing hard drive, but that is not the norm.

Can you get into the BIOS? If so, what is your boot order? Make sure the disk drive is at the top.

If you can't get into the BIOS, remove the hard drive and see if the situation improves.

 

[sonoferu]

thanks for the inputs, but taking out the HDD is more than I want to try. I am a software engineer with a medium to low level of hardware experience. I might replace a fan, but hdd in a laptop is a little scary for me

Luckily a guy where she works was able to get it out and get the most important of her files off to another drive, so she can do some of the crucial work she has due by end of tomorrow

cliffhanger!

 

[Matt1970]

The hard drive is just as easy as the ram. Usually the 2 screws for the cover is what locks the drive in place. Once you get that off it will probably pull straight back and then up. There is usually a little tab to pull on as well.