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    Vista on my 1520 will boot once every 3 tries

    Discussion in 'Dell' started by Auror, Jul 26, 2007.

  1. Auror

    Auror Notebook Guru

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    Just got my 1520 two days ago. All I did was uninstall McAfee, install FireFox, Thunderbird and Skype.
    Now my laptop won't boot every time :(
    What happens is the DELL boot screen will load and after that (when Vista should start loading) the screen goes black and only the underline ("_") symbol will stay and keep blinking. I need to press the power button to turn it off and then hit it again to turn it back on ... hoping Vista will boot this time.

    Has anybody came across that kind of problem? Does this sound like a software issue or should I be boxing my brand new dell to send it back wherever it came from?
    I must say I am pretty pissed after waiting 3 weeks for it to get here :(

    Oh yeah - I thought that maybe laptop might be trying to boot from an audio CD in the DVD-drive or maybe from the iPod hooked up to the USB port, but it has problems booting even without the ipod or a cd inside the drive.

    Any ideas?
     
    Auror, Jul 26, 2007
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  2. whistle

    whistle Notebook Consultant

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    Press F12 when you're booting and check the boot order, you can make sure it won't try to boot from CD/USB. Does the Vista screen show up? If yes, then the problem's not that it's trying to boot from non-HD...
     
    whistle, Jul 26, 2007
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  3. Auror

    Auror Notebook Guru

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    hmmm... When I hit F12 I could only choose a boot source but couldn't setup a boot sequence. I did that though in BIOS and now it's correct (HDD -> Cd/DVD -> USB), 'couse by default the internal HDD was on the second place, the first one was some kind of disc or disk ... don't remember ... something odd though ... I'll check that again in a minute and report back ..


    PS. What's with the hard drive working all the time on this 1520? Is it because of Vista indexing the system files? Or maybe it's only my 7200rpm hdd noisier and more hard working ;) than everybody elses?
    Did you guys also get this hdd behavior?
     
    Auror, Jul 26, 2007
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  4. thevjm

    thevjm Notebook Evangelist

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    Thats strange. I wish I could help. For some reason my Xbox 360 does this also.
     
    thevjm, Jul 26, 2007
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  5. illmatic2609

    illmatic2609 Notebook Deity

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    Well, that happened to me only once. I figured out that the problem was that my iPod was plugged into the USB port. After I took that out, it has been working fine.
     
    illmatic2609, Jul 26, 2007
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  6. Nedediah

    Nedediah Notebook Consultant

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    You might want to do a vista reinstall, get rid of the bloatware and try again. If you still have that problem then I'd lean toward a hardware problem but I'm still thinking software...
     
    Nedediah, Jul 26, 2007
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