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Question

Laptop froze, now stuck on Dell logo screen

Aug 11, 2011 3:52AM PDT

I have a Dell XPS M1530 Windows Vista laptop. While watching a video
for a class online, the laptop froze and would not respond to anything,
including Ctrl/Alt/Delete. I manually turned it off by holding the
power button. When I turned it back on, it made the usual sounds it
does while starting up and reaching the desktop, except it was not
showing anything on the screen. So I shut it off again by pressing the
power button. Now while trying to turn on it has been stuck on the Dell
logo screen with the bar only a quarter full. I'm afraid to mess with
it anymore until I can get help on what to do.

I'm really hoping I won't have to lose any memory because I have some very important work on it I have yet to back up.

Thank you for any help or suggestions!

Discussion is locked

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Answer
Restore
Aug 11, 2011 11:41AM PDT

Turn the computer on and start tapping the f8 key before anything even shows on the screen. If you get that far and you see a menu, Arrow up to Safe Mode and hit enter and wait until you see a desktop. It won't look the same as what you are used to.
If you can get that far, type in system restore in the Start search box. System Restore should come up, click on that .once the restore screen comes up, just follow the prompts and restore to a time and date before the trouble started.
That may or may not fix the problem, but it's a good starting point and you won't lose any data or mess up the computer.

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(NT) Will the data after the restore date be lost?
Jun 8, 2012 6:20AM PDT
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Re: loss of data
Jun 8, 2012 6:30AM PDT

No. You won't lose any data with this system restore built into Windows. Worth a try. But my guess is that you won't even get far enough to see that "Windows options menu".

If that very important work is still on your hard disk (most likely) you certainly will be able to get to it one way or another. So no need yet to worry about that.

Kees

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Answer
Same problem; but with XP Pro-see my solution/hope it helps
Aug 11, 2011 10:31PM PDT

I had your problem yesterday and solved it. Please see my post at
http://forums.cnet.com/7723-13974_102-536431.html?tag=contentBody;threadListing

Note: Geek term for "Dell logo screen" is "splash screen:"

In summary,

1) disconnect everything but monitor (that includes speakers, mouse & keyboard) from your computer
2) turn computer off; try and reboot
3) Hopefully you get error message to the effect of "no connection to keyboard."
4) plug in keyboard ...... computer automatically goes to chkdsk and roboots to OS (XP Pro in my case) automatically.
5) If 3&4 above don't work, open the case, pull out the hard drive and put it back.

I sure hope this helps.