Mystery Dell Won't Boot

[RetiredGuy1000]

A prospect has a dell, re-manufactured, not sure what model. He was on the phone and my objective was to get him to come in. Well, he is coming in tomorrow.

Says he installed one program upon receiving the refurbished Dell. A large graphics program. Prob photoshop. Anyhoo, after installing the program, he rebooted. Not sure if this occurred RIGHT after he installed the software, and I will learn more tomorrow...But the end result is sometime he rebooted and the machine wont load into Windows 10 anymore. He associates the issue with installing that program. But Windows wont load at all. Cant get past the Dos Screen and then nothing. Of course he is unsure if he can get into dos or not...

I know this is crap as far as information that I am providing you guys, but its what I have at the moment. My initial hypothesis is that he has a hard drive failure. I will see if I can run the Dell epsa diagnostic software (F12) to test the drive, but what if I cant do that? Is there any way to test the hard drive without pulling the drive and outside of windows?

I'm going to try and get him to leave the computer with me tomorrow..

 

[Sky-Knight]

Refurbished Dells usually come with 5+ year old platter drives in them, it's not uncommon for them to crap the bed shortly after they've been acquired. A big patch, or software install is a trigger of sorts, because it's the marathon that killed the 90 year old heart patient.

Which is why when I get a refurb Dell, the first thing I do is SSD the thing.

 

[lan101]

I've noticed a lot of the Amazon resellers are starting to put in new ssd's in their refurbs. I typically just put a brand new samsung ssd in that way I know everything is good with it. Platter drives just plain suck on windows 10 especially for the YYYYUUUUUGE updates constantly. SSD is the only way at this point. Anytime anyone calls with win10 update problems it's almost always a platter drive.

 

[River Valley Computer]

A prospect has a dell, re-manufactured, not sure what model. He was on the phone and my objective was to get him to come in. Well, he is coming in tomorrow.

Says he installed one program upon receiving the refurbished Dell. A large graphics program. Prob photoshop. Anyhoo, after installing the program, he rebooted. Not sure if this occurred RIGHT after he installed the software, and I will learn more tomorrow...But the end result is sometime he rebooted and the machine wont load into Windows 10 anymore. He associates the issue with installing that program. But Windows wont load at all. Cant get past the Dos Screen and then nothing. Of course he is unsure if he can get into dos or not...

I know this is crap as far as information that I am providing you guys, but its what I have at the moment. My initial hypothesis is that he has a hard drive failure. I will see if I can run the Dell epsa diagnostic software (F12) to test the drive, but what if I cant do that? Is there any way to test the hard drive without pulling the drive and outside of windows?

I'm going to try and get him to leave the computer with me tomorrow..

Boot with a Linux and run some hard drive tests. Might ought'a backup his data real soon too.

 

[marley1]

In sort if this comes off bad, but almost all your posts are asking for the forum to troubleshoot the issue before you even start?

How are you getting these clients?

This is troubleshooting 101

 

[RetiredGuy1000]

I assume he saw my ad. Or he googled and ran across my website.

 

[frase]

Use a windows 10 USB to boot. Then enter Command Prompt and enter rstrui.exe to run system restore.

 

[RetiredGuy1000]

I just burned a Linux mint usb. Will check out what I can do with that in terms of hardware diagnostic.

Ditto system restore via my Win 10 cd. Thank you.

This reminds me of my prior case where a guy had a HP all in one that wouldn’t boot into Windows. I quoted that guy like $350 for a new SSD when I deternined(with help from this forum) that his hdd was toast. He balked and went out and bought a new all in one.

So I don’t want to repeat that. I still need to get paid though. A new 500gb SSD is maybe $80. Loading windows and installing the new SSD is all labor. So who knows what to charge except $100 sounds fine to me. Maybe even $150. So $180 to $230 all in.

Not putting the cart before a proper diagnosis. So I will see what happens tomorrow.

 

[Porthos]

A new 500gb SSD is maybe $80

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07997QV4Z/ref=gno_cart_title_1?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&smid=A25SITGFW0OQJA

49.99

 

[GreyWolf]

Boot leg software may crash a operating system make sure that crap is genuine.

 

[lan101]

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07997QV4Z/ref=gno_cart_title_1?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&smid=A25SITGFW0OQJA

49.99

First review guy says 25 percent failure rate. No thanks lol. I stick with Samsung...if I sense a tight wad customer I'll tell them I can save them $30-$40 bucks but I put right on the invoice not recommended to use "less expensive" brand.

Unfortunately these are the same tight wads that won't buy an external so when sheeeet hits the fan they lose all their data...thankfully don't deal with this much though.

 

[RetiredGuy1000]

my thoughts exactly!

 

[RetiredGuy1000]

i successfully created an Ubuntu USB Drive tonight and was able to successfully get in and poke around. Very interesting...I can check disk health in the Disks app.

 

[Porthos]

First review guy says 25 percent failure rate.

Over 100 out in the wild. Most are 256 gig. Got about a dozen 512's and 5 1tb's.
No issues. Any brand can have issues and a bad motherboard controller can most likely kill them.

 

[lan101]

Over 100 out in the wild. Most are 256 gig. Got about a dozen 512's and 5 1tb's.
No issues. Any brand can have issues and a bad motherboard controller can most likely kill them.

My el cheapo brand I've tried has been Kingston. So far no issues...but I've only got maybe 10-15 total out there...so not really enough to say. They seem fine performance wise. I guess time will tell.

 

[brandonkick]

If he doesn't have anything to "lose" in the machine. I'd try reinstalling the OS and more importantly try reinstalling the program he is having trouble with.

Sounds a lot like the drive is dying. If it's a platter drive, it's likely a WD Blue. Those things stink even when they aren't 5+ years old. I've had a lot of those Blue drives die on me in the fleet of Optiplex machines we purchased at my part time job. Either way, it's not uncommon for refurbs to get whatever drives are left lying around. If it's a platter drive, that would be the first thing I suspect.

You could always yank the drive, slap in an SSD, slap Win 10 on it and then load up this graphics software... test drive it a bit and offer the customer the "upgrade" (which is already done) if the machine seems stable and the program doesn't seem to be causing trouble.

See how many power on hours that drive has. If it's a large amount, it's just time to replace it.

As far as getting paid goes... don't sell yourself short. Mark up the drive at least 10 to 15% and charge a fair hourly rate. The plumber doesn't have this little ethical debate on the way up to your house when you need work done. They know their rate, you pay it or you don't. They don't lose sleep either way.

 

[RetiredGuy1000]

Product is a refurbished Dell Inspiron 5570 laptop. Bios 1.13. Touchscreen. Intel Core i3-813. 2.2 ghz.

I was able to get into Dell diagnostics via F12. All tests run were 'ok'. Even the hard drive.

Apparently, there was some miscommunication....the machine DOES boot into Windows. But the only thing that is operational once he is in Windows is his shortcut to his new program(Serif PagePlus X9)..and that program works(everything clicks and responds to clicks). Nothing else allows you to click it however. Even the Windows button on the keyboard does nothing. This happened when he was here.

He left quickly and I started to work on the laptop.

Interestingly, the laptop booted up fine for me. So i ran a bunch of diagnostics that told me everything about the laptop. Hard disk is a 1TB HDD at 5400 rpm. HD Tune Pro and Crystal Disk was used to test HDD.

Shouldnt I uninstall that one large program and see if that stops the bad booting issue? It is looking to me like software is at issue as all my hardware checks have panned out.

 

[RetiredGuy1000]

Also there are several system restore points. that will delete the program in question(Serif PagePlus X9)...but it will also knock out his MS Office installation and his printer. Not a big deal really.

 

[Porthos]

Nothing else allows you to click it however. Even the Windows button on the keyboard does nothing.

Either do a repair install of the current version or upgrade to 1903 and that should fix it.

 

[RetiredGuy1000]

What's up Porthos? Thanks for that. I was afraid that wouldn't work and I would be frozen out once more, not able to get to System Restore. so I opted to do a System Restore. Will upgrade that to 1903. Hopefully that does it. He only has to reinstall that offending program as well as Office. But at least we wont have to do a reinstall of the os. Hopefully.