Booting troubles please help

ok so I am trying to get my laptop working. i turned it off one day and went to turn it on and it would not boot. I can't seem to figure it out. It is a Dell Latitude D610 and when i power it on it goes past the windows loading screen and to the boot screen asking if i want to start normaly, in safe mode, with last good config, ect. I have tried them all. after i click on one it will go to the windows loading page then after a while it will flash a quick blue screen so fast it is like it is a subliminal message(no time to read it). then it will bring me back to the boot screen again and give me booting options again. please help if you have any ideas. thanks

 

Try F2 on boot, this should get you into the BIOS. Then set options to boot from CD/DVD first, and try booting from your recovery disks.

Or, do you have a recovery partition on your hard drive. If yes, select that option on boot, in either case, try a repair.

Not certain this will fix your problem though. Could also be RAM proble, try reseating the RAM boards, should be found under a cover on the bottom of the lappy. Take out battery first, discharge by holding the on button first.:wave:wave

 

I tried and i must not have a recovery on the hard drive. I don't have disks either but is there a site online i could download them from and burn a recovery on a disk? also i re-seat the ram and it said the ram has been changed and i continued but it still does the same. do you think i should re-set the other ram stick? I am assuming it is under the keyboard.

 

On the Dell, press
Ctrl+F11
Aand if the boot has not been messed up, then you should get recovery from the hard drive.
Many laptops have these hidden partitions, and unfortunately do not tell you about them.

 

when do i press ctrl+F11? do i have to go to bios and press it or press it when it is attempting to start up or what?

 

With the laptop shut down, press start button, and try holding down f11, as I have not done one of these for a while, I have to try to remember.

 

Once starting, I just looked it up, as I could not remeber, as other laptops just need the one button pressed, but I found a good reference, that I had kept in my list of various fixes (very lucky, its still on-line-
Once keyboard is has been detected, and the f2, and f12 prompts have come up, press cntrl, then f11, but the old link is still there to run you through.
http://www.goodells.net/dellrestore/dellmbr.htm
To quote the full...
To divert the boot process to the DSR partition, press down the Ctrl key, press down the F11 key, then release both keys together. The keys must be pressed after the appearance of the F2/F12 prompts and before the end of the blue-line's 2-second pause.

 

yeah nothing happend

 

k ill try that

 

mine must not be a newer dell because it does not respond to ctrl f11. it doesnt even say i have a key stuck when i hold down any key

 

i also never see this blue line thing they talk about

 

Sometimes a hidden partition can be a bit fiddly-
Try it a few times, at different intervals as you start up-I had an Advent just recently, and took a chance, just guessing which key might initiate the hidden partition, and after half a dozen attempts, I believe that turned out to be f9- but , again, I believe the time scan is half the battle.

 

It seems like the mbr might have been changed,
"A normal MBR will not show this blue line, so that is an indicator that can be used to tell whether or not your system has a functioning Dell MBR."

 

If you follow that page down, it will save me a lot of explaining, about partions- the guide in the box can be seen when you use a tool like disk wizard, and othe rpartition recovery software.
I have just finished undoing two overwritten partitions to get recovery on an acer, that will show you the partition setup, and - believe it or, not, can even recover to the original with disc wizard, but that might take a lot of explanation, and time-
These hidden partitions are best found before too muchh wizardry, as the fat32 partition that they might be residing in has got to be kept, and its not so easy to recognise, only by size, around 3 to 4gb.

 

Probably one you might use to see if there are hidden partitions is
ptedit- I will look and come back if I can find it on majorgeeks, as this is the only one I would suggest you look at to see if there is a hidden partition- then shut it down, and let us know.
PartEdit32 is one that can be used to edit partions, but as a newbie, I would not suggest you use that, or pwhwe422 home edition does the roll back if partitions are overwritten, but you can mess your hard drive up if you don't have a little experience

 

On the Dell, I believe its the del key to press to get into bios on startup-
Press it and check the date in the bios- if the date and time are o.k, then that is one ruled out.
If you changed the ram before it would not start- Remove battery before changing ram- change it back, if not try I stick of ram only, then try the other stik seperately, if more than one.
There may be a stik of ram under the keyboard, as some kept them there on the older one's,- if so try changing that one.
Have you a windows XP Home set up?-on that model if its XP Home it would most likely have been an SP1 version, and you need the same version, to try a repair through Windows --if so see if you have a friend to borrow a disc from to attempt a repair from Xp disc.
I could not find a link for ptedit that I fancied leading you to, but you may find it at that previous site.

 

I have to go off-line now, but others may try to offer help, and I wish you good luck

 

It says to press those keys when the option to press F2 and F12 come up and hold them until before the 2-second pause. I don't know if this helps butl the F2 and F12 options are always up. maybe the scan isn't working and it isnt even trying to detect the keyboard?

 

the date and time in the BIOS are incorrect. does that tell you something? and ill look at your other suggestions. btw is there just a complete recovery thing i could do? i dont care if everything is erased unless it would erase windows and i would have to buy that too

 

:confused
What do you mean the F2 and f12 options are always up? Are you seeing that on the boot screen? You have to press them immediately after they appear. I usually just keep tapping the key, about twice a second.

 

well it says they are not suppose to pop up until the BIOS is done surveying the keyboard or whatever but as soon as the DELL logo pops up with the loading bar those options are up and the loading takes like 1 or 2 seconds and is done. I am also not seeing the blue line with white on blue text saying www.dell.com and i can get into the BIOS and stuff but anything i due in there doesn't seem to help other then i found that the date was off it that tells you anything.

 

Thanks Pldr- I am glad you have ressucitated dell's before, as I could only explain the general methods that I have used with laptops, and the link was to an old one I have used a long time ago.As you know there are many different ways to access hidden backups, and I did not want to point huntingdogo to do more than look to see if there was one, still on his laptop. I feel that although I can point him to the ptedit, it was not on majorgeeks downloads, and symantic had it at one time, I do not wish to complicate things, as without knowing how to use it, he could do more damage to the hard drive-
I will say, however that I have only found a dying cmos battery to not show the correct date, wether battery removed, or, not, to cause the same sort of problem.
If plodr's method fails to work, I would considerthe cmos battery-
plodr, does this model of Dell have a plug in cmos, or, is it soldered to the board?
Huntingdogo, follow plodr on your Dell.
I have made a note of this one, plodr, many thanks- useful when I play with laptops.

 

yes thanks for all the help so far. The laptop does boot up with no big battery and just having it plugged in. I pressed F8 but it does not give me an option to Repair Your Computer. it lists:
Safe Mode
Safe Mode with Networking
Safe Mode with Command Prompt

Enable Boot Logging
Enable VGA Mode
Last Knwn Good Configuration
Directory Services Restore Mode(Windows Domain Controllers Only)
Debugging Mode
Disable automatic restart on system failure

Start Windows Normally
Reboot
Return to OS Choices Menu

 

Choose safe mode, and then leave it until it gives you a prompt to stay in safe mode- then you should be able to get into windows- then try theuninstal driver that I mentioned earlier.
Otherwise you can go into control panel, add and remove programs, and look to see the last installed program/driver, or, update, on the day it crashed.
Try uninstalling that and restart.
Sorry I am busy, and cannot stay on-line, but plodr, or, one of the others might come back on.

 

i tried safe mode and every option there and none of them work.

 

The date was off by 1 day but that was right from the start so it may have been like that for a while. Do you suggest i change that button battery?

Also I pressed F8 but it does not give me an option to Repair Your Computer. It asks me if i want to start windows then at the bottom it says press F8 again for advanced options so i do that and it lists:
Safe Mode
Safe Mode with Networking
Safe Mode with Command Prompt

Enable Boot Logging
Enable VGA Mode
Last Knwn Good Configuration
Directory Services Restore Mode(Windows Domain Controllers Only)
Debugging Mode
Disable automatic restart on system failure

Start Windows Normally
Reboot
Return to OS Choices Menu

P.S. yepp i do live in the U.S.

 

I had a look and it seems that it is the plug in type of cmos battery, but I will look further to see if it means dismantling the laptop, or, its somewhere handy.
http://www.smallbattery.company.org.uk/sbc_cr2032-wr-dell.htm
http://www.smallbattery.company.org.uk/sbc_cr2032-wr-dell.htm

 

the battery is in an easy place to get to if this is it in the picture below that i attached.

 

Thats the one- as I said earlier some were just under the little panel (some are right inside, and need motherboard removing to get at them-real pigs)
I must get off-line- her indoors is calling

 

Try this.

1. Download a Live CD Linux Distro (www.knoppix.net) and burn it to CD
2. Put the CD into your Laptop
3. When you see the Dell logo, press F12
4. Select CD Rom Drive
5. Run Knoppix
6. Open up your hard drive, and delete the driver that was mentioned previously in the thread (delete the .SYS file for it)

 

:cool

 

ok should i try knoppix first so i don't spend money and waiting time to get a batter online?

 

also can somone give me more info about knoppix? what is the difference between the CD version and the DVD version? and how do i get it for free?

 

Knoppix notes from wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knoppix
Download
http://www.knopper.net/knoppix-mirrors/index-en.html
imageburn for iso
http://majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=4870

 

what if i get it running with knoppix? does that mean it is not the cmos battery? and maybe just windows that needs to be reinstalled or something? also what if I can not get it running with knoppix? it is not working but im in the process of trying it still.

 

yeah it's not even booting with knoppix. it runs for a while then shows a bunch of jiberish on the screen and just sits. does this mean its probably the cmos battery?

 

Cheap enough
http://www.golaptopparts.com/DELL_Latitude_d620-Dell_laptop_CMOS_battery_internal.html
SKU: 9200cmosbatt
Dell laptop CMOS battery internal

Regular Price: $ 14.95 / Each

Sale Price: $ 9.99 / Each

http://shop.ebay.co.uk/?_from=R40&_...e+D610+cmos+battery&_sacat=See-All-Categories

 

its on its way. thanks and ill let you know how it goes. cross your fingers ha. I might need to install an OS huh?

 

First of all, make sure that power is not connected, and remove main battery.
Next touch metal object to remove static from yourself (pipe/radiator) before touching system board, as you might do when removing cmos battery.
Change the battery straight away, but when replacing main battery, and starting for the first time, press del to go to bios.
Look for set defaults, in the bios (might be listed f9, or, similar) click to dave changes and exit.
Leave laptop alone, as it should restart, and go into your original windows setup, on its own.
If all goes well, you should boot into your original system.
If not, come back, and let us know what it does.
:banghead