Can't Boot or Show BIOS

Well, I let my laptop go to sleep as I went to a music recital, but then, when I came home, my laptop wouldn't show the BIOS. In other words, when I press the power button, the screen remains black. The power LED on the side turns on for 5 seconds, then turns off. No BIOS, no nothing. What should I do?

 

It sounds like your CMOS battery has run out of power. It is a small pill-shaped battery that resides on the motherboard and allows you to save BIOS settings. It should be easily accessible via one of the removable bottom panels on your laptop. The battery is sold at any place like the Source or FutureShop.

 

Wow, and this laptop is only half a year old?

 

That is strange... I would still test the battery with a multimeter just to make sure. Do you keep your laptop off for long periods of time?

 

try resetting the bios....or as Bog said change or check the battery....

 

No, that was only 1 hour and it was sleeping. I was talking to a Dell Tech Support guy and he showed me how to make it boot into diagnostic mode, and it's doing that now. But this has happened before...

 

How do you reset the BIOS?

 

A computer will still post even with no/dead CMOS battery. All settings would just be reset to defaults. At the least, he would get a CMOS cleared message and a request to replace the battery. BIOS and CMOS are stored and seperate chips. BIOS is stored on a nonvolatile flash chip, CMOS is stored on a bit of volatile memory, which is why it requires a battery to be kept.

He is not missing his CMOS settings. He's missing his full BIOS (perhaps). That's a lot more serious of an issue. How's the cooling on it? Have you kept it dust free? Does it -happen- to be an HP? It sounds to me like an overheating issue.

 

Hmm... It definitely wasn't overheating. The BIOS loads and such after I run diagnostics, which don't find anything.

 

well i presume its the inspiron 1520....so u can reset the bios in 2 ways....
the easy way is remove all power from ur laptop i.e. battery, usb drives, mouse, ac supply,and then press the power button for about 15-20 seconds....that shud do it..!!
if that doesnt work then u wud have to short a jumper on ur motherboard....which i wud not advise to do....!!

 

I agree with Hep, I don't think is the CMOS, everything breakes before the CMOS. A full reset as angad1608 is suggesting is appropriate.

This may sound stupid, but have you checked if your power block still works? May be you run out of battery and you have no DC!