Dell AIO will not boot...

In trying to aid an acquaintance who has a Dell 5348 desktop All-In-One
that will not boot into Windows 10; nor will it get to the point of
possibly booting from a DVD such as a Windows installation disk. It
will boot past the Dell splash logo and goes to the rotating icon but
never displays the F2 BIOS option or F12 boot options nor anything else.
The rotating icon will continue "forever," meaning hours.

I've tried per Dell's instruction to do a "cold" reset by removing all
power and holding power switch depressed 20+ seconds and longer. No
change, no effect.

I've detected that the hard drive has corrupt files but I can't deal
with that until I can at least boot past the BIOS and access a DVD or
hard drive.

What are your suggestions or recommendations? TIA c!

c! wrote:
In trying to aid an acquaintance who has a Dell 5348 desktop All-In-One
that will not boot into Windows 10; nor will it get to the point of
possibly booting from a DVD such as a Windows installation disk. It
will boot past the Dell splash logo and goes to the rotating icon but
never displays the F2 BIOS option or F12 boot options nor anything else.
The rotating icon will continue "forever," meaning hours.

I've tried per Dell's instruction to do a "cold" reset by removing all
power and holding power switch depressed 20+ seconds and longer. No
change, no effect.

I've detected that the hard drive has corrupt files but I can't deal
with that until I can at least boot past the BIOS and access a DVD or
hard drive.

What are your suggestions or recommendations? TIA c!

I'd take the drive out of the AIO machine, and put
it in my "technician" machine, do CHKDSK and so on.

Paul

On 06/19/20 22:36, Paul wrote:
c! wrote:
InÂ* trying to aid an acquaintance who has a Dell 5348 desktop
All-In-One that will not boot into Windows 10;Â*Â* nor will it get to
the point of possibly booting from a DVD such as a Windows
installation disk.Â*Â* It will boot past the Dell splash logo and goes
to the rotating icon but never displays the F2 BIOS option or F12 boot
options nor anything else. Â* The rotating icon will continue
"forever," meaning hours.

I've tried per Dell's instruction to do a "cold" reset by removing all
power and holding power switch depressed 20+ seconds and longer.Â*Â* No
change, no effect.

I've detected that the hard drive has corrupt files but I can't deal
with that until I can at least boot past the BIOS and access a DVD or
hard drive.

What are your suggestions or recommendations?Â* TIAÂ* c!

I'd take the drive out of the AIO machine, and put
it in my "technician" machine, do CHKDSK and so on.

Â*Â* Paul

I have done so and CHKDSK fails to complete resulting in a multitude of
File Record Segment at ______ is unreadable. After a lengthy list
Chkdsk ends in unknown error.

I am trying to salvage as many files as possible from the hard drive.
At this point, even if I replaced the hard drive I can't get to the DVD
to install a fresh copy of Windows.

On 20/06/2020 03:20, c! wrote:
InÂ* trying to aid an acquaintance who has a Dell 5348 desktop All-In-One
that will not boot into Windows 10;Â*Â* nor will it get to the point of
possibly booting from a DVD such as a Windows installation disk.Â*Â* It
will boot past the Dell splash logo and goes to the rotating icon but
never displays the F2 BIOS option or F12 boot options nor anything else.
Â* The rotating icon will continue "forever," meaning hours.

I've tried per Dell's instruction to do a "cold" reset by removing all
power and holding power switch depressed 20+ seconds and longer.Â*Â* No
change, no effect.

I've detected that the hard drive has corrupt files but I can't deal
with that until I can at least boot past the BIOS and access a DVD or
hard drive.

What are your suggestions or recommendations?Â* TIAÂ* c!
Perhaps try removing the CMOS battery, check it`s voltage, replace
battery if below par, and try again to get as far as the BIOS (use F2
key by tapping it till you get to the BIOS).

On 06/19/20 22:48, c! wrote:


On 06/19/20 22:36, Paul wrote:
c! wrote:
InÂ* trying to aid an acquaintance who has a Dell 5348 desktop
All-In-One that will not boot into Windows 10;Â*Â* nor will it get to
the point of possibly booting from a DVD such as a Windows
installation disk.Â*Â* It will boot past the Dell splash logo and goes
to the rotating icon but never displays the F2 BIOS option or F12
boot options nor anything else. Â* The rotating icon will continue
"forever," meaning hours.

I've tried per Dell's instruction to do a "cold" reset by removing
all power and holding power switch depressed 20+ seconds and
longer.Â*Â* No change, no effect.

I've detected that the hard drive has corrupt files but I can't deal
with that until I can at least boot past the BIOS and access a DVD or
hard drive.

What are your suggestions or recommendations?Â* TIAÂ* c!

I'd take the drive out of the AIO machine, and put
it in my "technician" machine, do CHKDSK and so on.

Â*Â*Â* Paul

I have done so and CHKDSK fails to complete resulting in a multitude of
File Record Segment at ______ is unreadable.Â*Â* After a lengthy list
Chkdsk ends in unknown error.

I am trying to salvage as many files as possible from the hard drive. At
this point, even if I replaced the hard drive I can't get to the DVD to
install a fresh copy of Windows.


My logic is that at the point the rotating icon is displayed and before
the F2 / F12 menu is displayed the control is still with the BIOS. At
that point (rotating icon) Windows or OS is not involved.... at least
not yet.

However, help me out here, does an operable hard drive have to be in
place for the BIOS to complete its tasks?

On 20/06/2020 04:00, Patrick wrote:
On 20/06/2020 03:20, c! wrote:
InÂ* trying to aid an acquaintance who has a Dell 5348 desktop
All-In-One that will not boot into Windows 10;Â*Â* nor will it get to
the point of possibly booting from a DVD such as a Windows
installation disk.Â*Â* It will boot past the Dell splash logo and goes
to the rotating icon but never displays the F2 BIOS option or F12 boot
options nor anything else. Â*Â* The rotating icon will continue
"forever," meaning hours.

I've tried per Dell's instruction to do a "cold" reset by removing all
power and holding power switch depressed 20+ seconds and longer.Â*Â* No
change, no effect.

I've detected that the hard drive has corrupt files but I can't deal
with that until I can at least boot past the BIOS and access a DVD or
hard drive.

What are your suggestions or recommendations?Â* TIAÂ* c!
Perhaps try removing the CMOS battery, check it`s voltage, replace
battery if below par, and try again to get as far as the BIOS (use F2
key by tapping it till you get to the BIOS).
Apparently, if you get five beeps from the machine it means the CMOS
battery is low.
See he
https://www.dell.com/support/article...re-is-No-Video

On 06/19/20 23:00, Patrick wrote:
On 20/06/2020 03:20, c! wrote:
InÂ* trying to aid an acquaintance who has a Dell 5348 desktop
All-In-One that will not boot into Windows 10;Â*Â* nor will it get to
the point of possibly booting from a DVD such as a Windows
installation disk.Â*Â* It will boot past the Dell splash logo and goes
to the rotating icon but never displays the F2 BIOS option or F12 boot
options nor anything else. Â*Â* The rotating icon will continue
"forever," meaning hours.

I've tried per Dell's instruction to do a "cold" reset by removing all
power and holding power switch depressed 20+ seconds and longer.Â*Â* No
change, no effect.

I've detected that the hard drive has corrupt files but I can't deal
with that until I can at least boot past the BIOS and access a DVD or
hard drive.

What are your suggestions or recommendations?Â* TIAÂ* c!
Perhaps try removing the CMOS battery, check it`s voltage, replace
battery if below par, and try again to get as far as the BIOS (use F2
key by tapping it till you get to the BIOS).

Thanks Patrick,I've considered that and it was on the agenda for
tomorrow morning. I did the "cold reset" suggested by Dell but it had
no effect.

On 20/06/2020 03:20, c! wrote:


What are your suggestions or recommendations?Â* TIAÂ* c!

Buy a new hard disk and install Windows 10 on it.Â* You can download
Windows 10 from the official source.

When your machine is running with the new hard disk, you can browse with
Windows explorer your defective hard disk and salvage any thing you
can.Â* then format it twice before making use of it as a spare hard
disk/backup drive.Â* Just buy and spindle drive for throw-away price.Â*
Seagate is quite cheap.Â* There is no need for SSD drive.

That's my recommendation!!.

We had HP AIO the other day and now we have Dell AIO.Â* What next?

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--
With over 1.2 billion devices now running Windows 10, customer
satisfaction is higher than any previous version of windows.

c! wrote:


On 06/19/20 22:48, c! wrote:


On 06/19/20 22:36, Paul wrote:
c! wrote:
In trying to aid an acquaintance who has a Dell 5348 desktop
All-In-One that will not boot into Windows 10; nor will it get to
the point of possibly booting from a DVD such as a Windows
installation disk. It will boot past the Dell splash logo and goes
to the rotating icon but never displays the F2 BIOS option or F12
boot options nor anything else. The rotating icon will continue
"forever," meaning hours.

I've tried per Dell's instruction to do a "cold" reset by removing
all power and holding power switch depressed 20+ seconds and
longer. No change, no effect.

I've detected that the hard drive has corrupt files but I can't deal
with that until I can at least boot past the BIOS and access a DVD
or hard drive.

What are your suggestions or recommendations? TIA c!

I'd take the drive out of the AIO machine, and put
it in my "technician" machine, do CHKDSK and so on.

Paul

I have done so and CHKDSK fails to complete resulting in a multitude
of File Record Segment at ______ is unreadable. After a lengthy list
Chkdsk ends in unknown error.

I am trying to salvage as many files as possible from the hard drive.
At this point, even if I replaced the hard drive I can't get to the
DVD to install a fresh copy of Windows.


My logic is that at the point the rotating icon is displayed and before
the F2 / F12 menu is displayed the control is still with the BIOS. At
that point (rotating icon) Windows or OS is not involved.... at least
not yet.

However, help me out here, does an operable hard drive have to be in
place for the BIOS to complete its tasks?


On these machines, it's possible that some portion of the
"features" of that popup boot, rely on something on the disk.

That's the problem with these things, is figuring them out.

There was one web site, in Australia, where someone collected
"trivia" about Dell disk setups. And how some of them worked.

However, there's nothing for modern setups, the ones with
UEFI and a boatload of extra partitions.

*******

This site thinks the problem is a bad hard drive.

https://www.partitionwizard.com/clon...nreadable.html

I'm not convinced. I think it's more than a bit strange, that
"suddenly" a series of random clusters are unreadable. I
think it's more likely that the $MFT got damaged somehow,
and it's pointing at some strange places. Or, some "repair
procedure" has managed to "magnify" a bad situation.

That used to happen with loose IDE cables. A repair
person could fire up a copy of CHKDSK, with good intention,
and CHKDSK, on seeing "thousands of errors" with the cable
loose, would attempt to do "thousands of writes" with the
cable loose. And suddenly, the disk drive was full of
"bullet holes", all thanks to CHKDSK.

Yes, it could be just a plain ole bad hard drive. Sure.
But in my experience, they manifest differently than this.
Modern drives fail a bit slower. Maybe you lose the ability
to boot a drive, but the file system is (mostly) intact.

I think one of the repair attempts did this.

I haven't a clue what to do about it. If it happened
here, I would restore from backup.

These POS should have recovery media and backup strategies
baked in. Instead of leaving the inevitable "hole in the
ground", lose everything, lose ability to boot (because
of some weirdness of the UEFI BIOS).

Even if the idiots at these companies provided downloadable
recovery media, it would be better than nothing. You could
hook the media up to your technician machine, restore, then
move the drive to the 5348.

You can have stacked boot loaders on UEFI. You could have
REFind and a Linux UEFI boot loader, and the two of them
chained together to boot the machine. There's really no
limit to the clever things you can do. However, for the
person cleaning up the mess later, it would be nice if
a web page explained "how it used to work before the
disk broke".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/REFInd

With the disk connected to your Technician machine, see
if you can run the WDC or Seagate disk test program against
the disk, and see what it says about the disk state
("failing..." or whatever). It'll give you something to
do while you try to develop a plan.

Paul

On 6/19/2020 10:20 PM, c! wrote:
InÂ* trying to aid an acquaintance who has a Dell 5348 desktop All-In-One
that will not boot into Windows 10;Â*Â* nor will it get to the point of
possibly booting from a DVD such as a Windows installation disk.Â*Â* It
will boot past the Dell splash logo and goes to the rotating icon but
never displays the F2 BIOS option or F12 boot options nor anything else.
Â* The rotating icon will continue "forever," meaning hours.

I've tried per Dell's instruction to do a "cold" reset by removing all
power and holding power switch depressed 20+ seconds and longer.Â*Â* No
change, no effect.

I've detected that the hard drive has corrupt files but I can't deal
with that until I can at least boot past the BIOS and access a DVD or
hard drive.

What are your suggestions or recommendations?Â* TIAÂ* c!

https://www.dell.com/support/article...system?lang=en

So according to Dell itself, just start pressing the F2 key even if you
don't see the announcement to press the F2 key. Start pressing it as
soon as the keyboard lights start to flash, but don't hold the F2 key
down for too long, as that will be interpreted as a stuck key by the
BIOS. So basically, your human timing is all important here. Now isn't
that just how it's just supposed to be, we're here to serve at the
convenience of our machines?

Yousuf Khan

c! wrote:


On 06/19/20 22:48, c! wrote:


On 06/19/20 22:36, Paul wrote:
c! wrote:
In trying to aid an acquaintance who has a Dell 5348 desktop
All-In-One that will not boot into Windows 10; nor will it get to
the point of possibly booting from a DVD such as a Windows
installation disk. It will boot past the Dell splash logo and goes
to the rotating icon but never displays the F2 BIOS option or F12
boot options nor anything else. The rotating icon will continue
"forever," meaning hours.

I've tried per Dell's instruction to do a "cold" reset by removing
all power and holding power switch depressed 20+ seconds and
longer. No change, no effect.

I've detected that the hard drive has corrupt files but I can't deal
with that until I can at least boot past the BIOS and access a DVD
or hard drive.

What are your suggestions or recommendations? TIA c!

I'd take the drive out of the AIO machine, and put
it in my "technician" machine, do CHKDSK and so on.

Paul

I have done so and CHKDSK fails to complete resulting in a multitude
of File Record Segment at ______ is unreadable. After a lengthy list
Chkdsk ends in unknown error.

I am trying to salvage as many files as possible from the hard drive.
At this point, even if I replaced the hard drive I can't get to the
DVD to install a fresh copy of Windows.


My logic is that at the point the rotating icon is displayed and before
the F2 / F12 menu is displayed the control is still with the BIOS. At
that point (rotating icon) Windows or OS is not involved.... at least
not yet.

However, help me out here, does an operable hard drive have to be in
place for the BIOS to complete its tasks?


On a regular UEFI BIOS, I believe it's possible to open
a UEFI shell. If the Dell has that, it's probably hidden.

In this thread, someone figures out how to add something to
the UEFI boot variables, so that the UEFI can "find stuff".
This should not really be necessary. My F8 popup-boot, by
comparison, can "smell" both the legacy and the UEFI boot
on a DVD disc. Which enables booting media and reinstalling
OSes and so on.

The Dell UEFI is just "hurtin". I can see Jesus crying
when he sees this.

https://www.dell.com/community/Stora...u/td-p/5088581

Notice in the ESP (system partition on a GPT disk), that
in the examples there is

Microsoft
Dell

The Microsoft entry would be the Windows UEFI boot loader in
the ESP. Whereas the Dell entry, boots something Dell related,
like Recovery or Diagnostics or stuff like that.

That's why forensics (taking partitions apart, looking at files),
is necessary to get some idea how a particular instance is
hooked together.

I don't understand it all. I've made some horrible messes
(and recovered). I've kept a couple large disks with many
OSes on it running. But, there's a lot of trial and error,
and it never seems to get any easier.

If the ESP is trashed, then a certain number of the UEFI
menu items aren't going to work. To get a DVD to work, just
might require the nonsense in the thread above. If the BIOS
was only a legacy MBR BIOS, then shoving a DVD in, and
making sure the optical device was "in the boot order",
would be enough to get it to work.

My Optiplex 780 is unfortunately, only a legacy BIOS, but
it's "non-standard enough" for me to sympathize with another
user going through it. The thing is, Dell "works to a standard".
That means, they use multiple BIOS suppliers, there's a spec
as to what should show in each screen, how brain dead the
various dialogs are supposed to be. There's no room for
improvement. If Asus was doing it, each generation of
UEFI BIOS would be a little bit more slick and smooth.
Things that "didn't work" or "people hated", would get
fixed. Dell on the other hand, seems to be a slave to
their UI. Which means if a method sucks, it must suck forever.

I've never had an ESP corrupt, and normally only an OS
installer can blow one to hell and back. There's a difference
between corruption (file system on ESP ruined), versus
the more normal "we messed up the folders in here on purpose,
hope you like it" thing that happens.

Since you can't boot, we'd need to move your disk drive
to another machine, boot Linux, and use GDISK to get
some idea what the partition type fields are on the
partitions. And see if the ESP is still labeled properly.

Paul

"Yousuf Khan" wrote in message
...

snip

So according to Dell itself, just start pressing the F2 key even if you
don't see the announcement to press the F2 key. Start pressing it as soon
as the keyboard lights start to flash, but don't hold the F2 key down for
too long, as that will be interpreted as a stuck key by the BIOS. So
basically, your human timing is all important here. Now isn't that just
how it's just supposed to be, we're here to serve at the convenience of
our machines?


The phrase that I think best conveys the meaning is to 'tap the bios key
like a demented woodpecker'.

--
Regards
wasbit

On 06/20/20 06:43, wasbit wrote:
"Yousuf Khan" wrote in message
...

snip

So according to Dell itself, just start pressing the F2 key even if
you don't see the announcement to press the F2 key. Start pressing it
as soon as the keyboard lights start to flash, but don't hold the F2
key down for too long, as that will be interpreted as a stuck key by
the BIOS. So basically, your human timing is all important here. Now
isn't that just how it's just supposed to be, we're here to serve at
the convenience of our machines?


The phrase that I think best conveys the meaning is to 'tap the bios key
like a demented woodpecker'.

LOL - great description but it sure gets thes pot across. Thanks.

On 06/20/20 00:26, Yousuf Khan wrote:
On 6/19/2020 10:20 PM, c! wrote:
InÂ* trying to aid an acquaintance who has a Dell 5348 desktop
All-In-One that will not boot into Windows 10;Â*Â* nor will it get to
the point of possibly booting from a DVD such as a Windows
installation disk.Â*Â* It will boot past the Dell splash logo and goes
to the rotating icon but never displays the F2 BIOS option or F12 boot
options nor anything else. Â*Â* The rotating icon will continue
"forever," meaning hours.

I've tried per Dell's instruction to do a "cold" reset by removing all
power and holding power switch depressed 20+ seconds and longer.Â*Â* No
change, no effect.

I've detected that the hard drive has corrupt files but I can't deal
with that until I can at least boot past the BIOS and access a DVD or
hard drive.

What are your suggestions or recommendations?Â* TIAÂ* c!

https://www.dell.com/support/article...system?lang=en


So according to Dell itself, just start pressing the F2 key even if you
don't see the announcement to press the F2 key. Start pressing it as
soon as the keyboard lights start to flash, but don't hold the F2 key
down for too long, as that will be interpreted as a stuck key by the
BIOS. So basically, your human timing is all important here. Now isn't
that just how it's just supposed to be, we're here to serve at the
convenience of our machines?

Â*Â*Â*Â*Yousuf Khan

Thanks. I'll have a go at it today

On 06/20/20 00:41, Paul wrote:
c! wrote:


On 06/19/20 22:48, c! wrote:


On 06/19/20 22:36, Paul wrote:
c! wrote:
InÂ* trying to aid an acquaintance who has a Dell 5348 desktop
All-In-One that will not boot into Windows 10;Â*Â* nor will it get to
the point of possibly booting from a DVD such as a Windows
installation disk.Â*Â* It will boot past the Dell splash logo and
goes to the rotating icon but never displays the F2 BIOS option or
F12 boot options nor anything else.Â*Â* The rotating icon will
continue "forever," meaning hours.

I've tried per Dell's instruction to do a "cold" reset by removing
all power and holding power switch depressed 20+ seconds and
longer.Â*Â* No change, no effect.

I've detected that the hard drive has corrupt files but I can't
deal with that until I can at least boot past the BIOS and access a
DVD or hard drive.

What are your suggestions or recommendations?Â* TIAÂ* c!

I'd take the drive out of the AIO machine, and put
it in my "technician" machine, do CHKDSK and so on.

Â*Â*Â* Paul

I have done so and CHKDSK fails to complete resulting in a multitude
of File Record Segment at ______ is unreadable.Â*Â* After a lengthy
list Chkdsk ends in unknown error.

I am trying to salvage as many files as possible from the hard drive.
At this point, even if I replaced the hard drive I can't get to the
DVD to install a fresh copy of Windows.


My logic is that at the point the rotating icon is displayed and
before the F2 / F12 menu is displayed the control is still with the
BIOS.Â*Â* At that point (rotating icon) Windows or OS is not
involved....Â* at least not yet.

However, help me out here, does an operable hard drive have to be in
place for the BIOS to complete its tasks?


On a regular UEFI BIOS, I believe it's possible to open
a UEFI shell.Â* If the Dell has that, it's probably hidden.

In this thread, someone figures out how to add something to
the UEFI boot variables, so that the UEFI can "find stuff".
This should not really be necessary. My F8 popup-boot, by
comparison, can "smell" both the legacy and the UEFI boot
on a DVD disc. Which enables booting media and reinstalling
OSes and so on.

The Dell UEFI is just "hurtin". I can see Jesus crying
when he sees this.

https://www.dell.com/community/Stora...u/td-p/5088581


Notice in the ESP (system partition on a GPT disk), that
in the examples there is

Â*Â* Microsoft
Â*Â* Dell

The Microsoft entry would be the Windows UEFI boot loader in
the ESP. Whereas the Dell entry, boots something Dell related,
like Recovery or Diagnostics or stuff like that.

That's why forensics (taking partitions apart, looking at files),
is necessary to get some idea how a particular instance is
hooked together.

I don't understand it all. I've made some horrible messes
(and recovered). I've kept a couple large disks with many
OSes on it running. But, there's a lot of trial and error,
and it never seems to get any easier.

If the ESP is trashed, then a certain number of the UEFI
menu items aren't going to work. To get a DVD to work, just
might require the nonsense in the thread above. If the BIOS
was only a legacy MBR BIOS, then shoving a DVD in, and
making sure the optical device was "in the boot order",
would be enough to get it to work.

My Optiplex 780 is unfortunately, only a legacy BIOS, but
it's "non-standard enough" for me to sympathize with another
user going through it. The thing is, Dell "works to a standard".
That means, they use multiple BIOS suppliers, there's a spec
as to what should show in each screen, how brain dead the
various dialogs are supposed to be. There's no room for
improvement. If Asus was doing it, each generation of
UEFI BIOS would be a little bit more slick and smooth.
Things that "didn't work" or "people hated", would get
fixed. Dell on the other hand, seems to be a slave to
their UI. Which means if a method sucks, it must suck forever.

I've never had an ESP corrupt, and normally only an OS
installer can blow one to hell and back. There's a difference
between corruption (file system on ESP ruined), versus
the more normal "we messed up the folders in here on purpose,
hope you like it" thing that happens.

Since you can't boot, we'd need to move your disk drive
to another machine, boot Linux, and use GDISK to get
some idea what the partition type fields are on the
partitions. And see if the ESP is still labeled properly.

Â*Â* Paul

Paul, thank you for your thoughts and time which gives insight into what
may be going on in that machine. The machine belongs to a third party
so there are limits to how far I feel that I should proceed with it.
Further, the owner's most recent backup is two years old and of no value.

My day today will involve exploration, study and evaluation. Thanks for
the advise and help. c!