Dell inspiron laptop

Pandora123

Had motherboard replaced in feb of this year. Worked fine. Last night when I tried to boot up, it either stays on the dell home screen or gives preparing for auto repair message. Neither goes away.  Suggestions to try?

TSTonyV

Hello @pandora123! Welcome to the Community. 

Is the battery removable from the bottom of the computer? If you can remove the battery without having to actually open up the  laptop, I would try removing the battery, unplugging the charger then holding down the power button for 30 seconds. After that reattach the battery and try turning it back on and see if anything changes. 

If you can do that, try the same process just without removing the battery, and see if it will make it through automatic repair. If it makes it through automatic repair and gives you any recovery options, try going navigating through some like a system restore and see if that helps at all. 

Pandora123

Cant remove battery without opening case.  I tried turning off, waiting 30 sec and trying to turn on three times.  Still sticks either on dell or auto repair screen.

PowerSpec_MikeW

The indicators from what the computer sounds like it's doing. Is that it's trying to access your hard drive and either hangs trying to access it, or accesses it then hangs trying to enter recovery mode. When you have the Dell screen and you said it doesn't go away. Does it give you the loading icon with the spinning dots, or does it just sit on the Dell screen? Also, do you a Windows 10 flash drive to boot to?

Pandora123

It spins and gives the message preparing auto repair but never goes further. I was able to get to the diagnostics screen and run a hardware check, came up no issues detected.

TSKyleH

Thank you for that update @Pandora123, since it is trying to get to the recovery environment we may be looking at windows corruption. Do you have a windows 10 flash drive? if not, you can use the media creation tool to create one. This will provide aid in performing a clean install of windows which would erase everything stored on the computer.