Dell Inspiron Won't Turn On

Is your Dell Inspiron not turning on? This problem page will go over several common occurrences when it comes to your Dell Inspiron not powering on or booting into Windows. The problem can be caused by either software or hardware causes, so read on to determine the right solution for you!

This may seem trivial but a restart of your computer is the first thing you should try. This tends to fix some innocuous issues.

1. Press and hold the power button for 10 seconds. If the computer was powered on but not displaying anything, it will force restart.
2. If a regular force reset does not work, a hard reset is necessary to drain the capacitors fully. To do this, remove all peripherals, laptop charger, and laptop battery. Once everything is removed, hold the power button down for 60 seconds. This makes the computer attempt to power on and drain the capacitors and as a result, the built-up static charge.
3. Sometimes, you will need to unplug the BIOS battery (CMOS battery) in addition to draining all power to the laptop.

Another good first step is charging your Dell Inspiron laptop.

• Make sure the laptop charger is plugged into a known good power source and let the laptop charge for 15 minutes or more.

After rooting out the battery and charger as issues, the motherboard is the next culprit.

• Check out our replacement motherboards for your model of Inspiron and an associated guide.

The computer could still work well, but the laptop display is broken or disconnected.

• Use a separate monitor to test if your computer is outputting anything.

Try a software fix by restarting the video driver. This works in Windows 7 and up.

• Use this keyboard shortcut to restart the video drivers: Windows Key + Ctrl (Control) + Shift + B.

Your laptop may be fighting the BIOS settings when powering on. Resetting these settings to their defaults rids any unwanted boot settings.

• To return the BIOS to its default values, press the power button on the laptop and tap the F2 key repeatedly until it you see Setup on the screen.
• On some models, you will need to use a different key (ESC, delete, etc) to get into the BIOS settings.

ePSA, or Enhanced Pre-Boot System Assessment, is where you can run diagnostic tests. This will give you a detailed report of hardware issues to narrow your issue down.

1. Power on the laptop and press the F12 key repeatedly.
2. If this doesn’t work, hold the fn (function) key while pressing the power button.
3. From the options select Diagnostics using the arrow keys.

Beep codes and lights are used to diagnose issues computers have when booting. Document these beeps and light flashes and search online for your exact Inspiron model to find the beep codes associated. To read more on these codes, visit Dell’s beep code support page.

• With the laptop powered off, press the power button and listen for any beeping sounds or flashing lights on the side of the laptop.

Reseating helps to reconnect any loose connections to your laptop’s memory. As laptops are moved around in backpacks or slammed down on desks, the RAM may slightly jostle. Reseating the memory ensures a solid connection.

• Power off the laptop, remove screws, pull RAM out, blow air into the slot, reinsert RAM, and power on the laptop.

POST is done by the BIOS to check if all parts of the computer are working as intended.

Computers may try to boot from a USB flash drive or DVD depending on the BIOS order. Removing all peripherals forces the computer to focus on the boot files on the main hard drive.

1. Remove any USBs or DVDs that may be preventing the normal boot process.
2. If your laptop is having trouble booting to Windows, run Dell Diagnostics by pressing F12 repeatedly as you press the power button.

If you are using Windows, boot into Safe Mode to troubleshoot the issue.

1. Hold the power button for 10 seconds to power off the laptop to boot into Safe Mode. Press the power button to start the laptop. Do this 2 more times to get Windows to boot into a recovery environment.
2. You will see Choose an option at the top of the page. Navigate using the arrow keys to Troubleshoot > Advanced options > Startup Settings > Restart.
3. Windows will restart and show a menu of options. Choose Safe Mode with Networking. We need to boot into Safe Mode because it uses a basic driver and will let us view the screen if it is a software issue.
4. From here, you should be able to uninstall the corrupt graphics drivers and reboot the computer back to regular Windows.
5. The boot partition might have been corrupted. If Safe Mode does not work, Windows will need to be installed again.