Desktop Start Issue

I had a similar issue once before and it turned out to be the CMOS battery on the motherboard. If you booted the computer after it being shutdown for a while, there wasn't enough power in the battery to power the initial boot components and everything just froze. But if you left it running for a few seconds, the power supply would charge everything up. Then when you rebooted, there was just enough power to for everything to proceed as normal.

You might be able to look at a boot log to try and troubleshoot it, but ddot98 is likely correct. It's a cheap and easy fix if its your CMOS battery, so I'd try that asap. If you're wrong, then you're not out much cash and haven't wasted much time.

I had similar type of problem but haven't found a solution. Now most of the time it works fine so I let it drop. I am thinking it could be with Computer Case Power button. The case must be grounded with copper wire that sort of stuff. I have seen some people, computer chassis, metal part where you put the cd disk drive to Power Supply with a copper wire. I can't say this is solution for you, but something to look at.

Currently my computer is working fine. The notable change I have made is to my Dlink Router setting. Saved my old setting file of Dlink as config. Made some changes such as giving access to some ip address, changing channel. etc.
Right now my computer is much faster than before, plus Internet Explorer that was quite slow before much faster. I did some power setting changes to my computer.

ddot98 wrote: ↑ I had a similar issue once before and it turned out to be the CMOS battery on the motherboard. If you booted the computer after it being shutdown for a while, there wasn't enough power in the battery to power the initial boot components and everything just froze. But if you left it running for a few seconds, the power supply would charge everything up. Then when you rebooted, there was just enough power to for everything to proceed as normal.

Thanks, I recently replaced the CMOS battery, but the issue persists

Have you tried a new install of windows? Try loading a fresh install of windows on another hard drive/SSD, Or have you installed any new hardware lately ? If you got some spare parts around, do some trial and error . Swap the powersupply/GPU/ Ram sticks and slots to systematically go thru each component one at a time. Through process of elimination you'll find out the problem.

My wild guess is motherboard dying. Which will be tougher to " Fix" .... that's why explore the other possibilities first. good luck

I had a very similar problem years ago. It looks very much like you are having trouble successfully loading your BIOS. It doesn't appear that it is even getting to the point where your PC attempts to access the HDD and load Windows.

You may not be aware, but the BIOS needs memory (RAM) in order to load itself. You have a location in memory that is unstable, and your BIOS will not completely load itself. By turning the power off and on, it seems like it kicks the unstable RAM into operation. When the problem occurred on my system I tried changing the memory voltages to make it more stable, but nothing helped.

I isolated the bad RAM stick by attempting to power on the PC with only one stick at a time installed. I eventually found the bad stick.

My guess: Have a slow HDD (did you change it recently) and using UEFI. No start-up delay and the HDD isn't ready when the BIOS is ready for it to boot? Might look in BIOS setting and see if there's something to delay boot up. I know my Lenovo S30s take quite some time to start the boot process probably due to BIOS allowing for the SCU drive it could have to come up to speed. By comparison the Yoga 2 will be at the log-in screen (6 seconds power on to log in with a Samsung EVO SSD) while the S30 is still in POST mode.

this is good troubleshooting step1 as it looks like a windows issue. in most cases its not worth the time of trying to find if it is some application/driver causing it
make sure you back up your stuff first
download the windows 10 media creation tool and create a bootable usb
https://www.microsoft.com/en-ca/softwar ... /windows10.
Before reinstalling
open you case and check for dust etc and check if your dell has a regular hdd and not a ssd
If no ssd then i would straight up by a new ssd like coilz says before reinstalling windows
it will give new life to your computer as well as potentially fixing your issue
wait till ssd arrives. remove existing harddrive or just unplug, install and connect ssd
boot with bootable windows key and install

coilz wrote: ↑ Have you tried a new install of windows? Try loading a fresh install of windows on another hard drive/SSD, Or have you installed any new hardware lately ? If you got some spare parts around, do some trial and error . Swap the powersupply/GPU/ Ram sticks and slots to systematically go thru each component one at a time. Through process of elimination you'll find out the problem.

My wild guess is motherboard dying. Which will be tougher to " Fix" .... that's why explore the other possibilities first. good luck

So I finally got around on the weekend to back up the hard drive and do a factory reset. I was using the Dell recovery tool because the Windows reset was crashing and causing errors. Dell recovery tool detected some issues and fixed it, before I reset it.

However, the issue persists.

I'm now wondering whether the SSD that came with the HDD is the cause of the problem? During the reset, I wasn't able to see the SSD to install the Windows, and even though it came with 2TB Hard Drive + 32GB M.2 SSD Cache, I only see total capacity of only 1.8TB hard drive?

I've made only minor changes to the hardware: 1) adding more HDD, but even with these disconnected, I still have issues; 2) replacing CMOS battery - could new cheap battery cause this issue?

So you machine only has a 2TB mechanical hard drive and a 32gb SSD cache? 1.8TB of actual capacity is due to the different ways the OS sees storage and how manufacturers calculate storage. But it is correct both ways.

If you only have the 32gb ssd cache, then you don't really have a SSD drive. The cache is just meant to " speed things up" and not an actual storage drive, so you might not see it at all in Windows.

Try to do a full clean install from a Windows 10 install media instead of recovery from the recovery partition. Preferably taking out the old hard drive and SSD cache and installing in a new SSD.

Cheap CMOS battery shouldn't cause the type of issue you're experiencing.

Turns out the issue is due to Windows 10's Fast Startup mode. After I disabled the fast startup, I don't have issues any more. Explanation here: https://www.howtogeek.com/243901/the-pr ... rtup-mode/

goodhours wrote: ↑ Turns out the issue is due to Windows 10's Fast Startup mode.

Thanks for the update and good to know. I had a friend who was trying to add Windows 10 as a dual boot to their Windows 7 install (so they could switch over more gently) a couple years ago and ended up corrupting the Windows 7 install. Fast Startup seemed to be the root cause of it. I've also had problems with Fast Startup as part of a dual boot setup with a Linux install. It's now one of the first things I switch off in a fresh Windows 10 install. The downsides seem to vastly outweigh the benefits. I'll add your experience to my list of reasons why Fast Startup needs to die.