Chosen Solution
Hello! Helping a friend with their Inspiron 3531. It was having a bizarre issue where it would take up to a half hour after pressing the power button to actually boot to windows. It graduated to its current state, where it doesn’t even appear to complete its post. Currently, pressing the power button gives me two or three seconds of white light on the front LED. Doing so with the RAM removed gives me the appropriate two beeps. Either way, I get no action from the hard drive or monitor (though I haven’t tried plugging an external monitor in yet). I’ve tried other suggested power button related actions such as unplugging it and holding it for 30 seconds, and holding the fn key and pressing it, with no changes in the computers behavior. Does anyone have any further suggestions on further diagnostics? Thank you!
Hi @bbobobob , Try disconnecting all the power from the laptop, charger, battery and coin cell battery and see if this will reset the BIOS back to its’ default state, in case it is a corrupted BIOS that is the cause of the problem. (Note the orientation of the coin cell battery when you remove it to ensure that you re-insert it the correct way) It is a bit involved but at this stage you may have to try things. After you have replaced everything, except the HDD perhaps, try starting the laptop and check if it starts and passes POST to a point where it says no boot device found or similar. Here’s a link to the service manual for the laptop. Scroll to p.52 to view the necessary pre-requisite steps and then the procedure to remove the coin cell battery. You may wish to check the voltage of the battery when it is out just to verify that it is OK.
