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Problem description: I recently received a Dell Inspiron 15R 5521 from a friend to use as a secondary computer. She hardly used it, but it was running pretty slow and didn't seem to be well kept care of as far as software. Physically it's almost flawless. So I uninstall McAfee, run a Security Essential scan, download CCleaner and Malwarebytes and run those as well. Then I check Windows Update and see that there are some pending updates that won't install due to Windows already updating something. It turns out to be the 8.1 update that came out in like 2014 as far as I can tell. That finishes and reboots to a Dell loading screen that took maybe an hour and a half to proceed to 100%, then reboot again to a black screen and a beep code of 5 beeps. I've made no progress since then. Attempted fixes: -After the beep code popped up, I found that it pointed to a Real Time Clock power fail and the most prominent cause of that was a CMOS battery failure. That sounded too convenient to me, but I swapped the battery out with a new one which fixed nothing. -I have gotten it past the beep code a few times by pulling the battery and power supply, holding the power button down for 30 seconds and then turning the system back on. Every now and then this will result in an odd boot loop where the system will get power, the hard drive will start to spin up and then it shuts down and starts over. I have yet to see anything on the screen since the beep code started. -I've pulled the hard drive out, popped it into a enclosure and hooked up to my main pc. I can see the os filesystem, and even made a copy of it on my own hd. -I've even tried booting with one stick of ram just in case. -I can't boot from CD or USB and have tried. Either the mobo is borked somehow, or no video is outputting to the screen. Oh, I hooked up an external monitor and got no signal on that either. Recent changes: Other than the 8.1 update, no. I can't speak for the previous owner, but it seemed usable until that point. Operating system: Windows 8 64bit System specs: Dell Inspiron 15R 5521, Intel i7-3537U, 8 gigs of ram, Integrated GPU Location: USA I have Googled and read the FAQ: Yes, quite a bit
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Sep 16, 2016 00:20
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| # ? Apr 25, 2024 22:19 |
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Have you tried each stick of RAM individually?
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Sep 17, 2016 05:25
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Zogo posted:Have you tried each stick of RAM individually? Yep. Each one on it's own in both slots.
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Sep 17, 2016 06:15
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Can you get it to any sort of boot? Like if you put in an MRI cd to boot off of in order to run hardware diagnostics?
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Sep 25, 2016 04:38
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Oxphocker posted:Can you get it to any sort of boot? Like if you put in an MRI cd to boot off of in order to run hardware diagnostics? I actually picked it back up on Friday morning after looking at it in disgust for over a week and somehow managed to F12 into the boot menu. I started a clean install of Windows, got to the point in the install where it needed to restart to continue and restarted to the black screen and 5 beep scenario. I haven't been able resurrect it again since then.
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Sep 25, 2016 17:38
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download a copy of the best buy MRI somewhere, burn it on a cd, boot into it, run the diagnostics...might give you a clue as to what is going on.. If you're getting a boot, at least that's something to start with.
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Sep 25, 2016 18:53
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| # ? Apr 25, 2024 22:19 |
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I'll try it, but who knows when I'll actually make it to the boot menu again. Thanks!
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Sep 25, 2016 20:37
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