Slow to power up my laptop

We lost power here about a month ago, and ever since then, it takes a
ridiculously long time to power up my Dell Inspiron 6000 notebook. I've
looked at the power settings and everything looks ok. I don't have any large
files stored - I mainly use this for email and browsing the internet.

Any ideas/advice would be much appreciated.
Thank you.

Nancy wrote:

We lost power here about a month ago, and ever since then, it takes a
ridiculously long time to power up my Dell Inspiron 6000 notebook.
I've looked at the power settings and everything looks ok. I don't
have any large files stored - I mainly use this for email and
browsing the internet.

Any ideas/advice would be much appreciated.


Please be specific. How long is "a ridiculously long time"? How long had it
been before?

Other than in startup time, is the speed of the computer otherwise
satisfactory? Has it changed?

Have you checked the list of what programs start automatically in the
background?

What anti-virus and anti-spyware programs do you run, and are they
up-to-date?

--
Ken Blake - Microsoft MVP Windows: Shell/User
Please reply to the newsgroup

Is it doing what my Inspiron 6000 has been doing now and then, for a
couple of months now?:

Turnng computer on:
1. Green power light-indicator comes on.
2. Hard-drive light-lindicator comes on, blinks, then goes off (over
space of a few seconds).
3. Screen remains dark - no illuminated pixels at all.

Dell customer service:
Remove battery, unplug AC adapter from back of laptop.
Hold down the power button for 20 seconds.
Plug AC adapter back in (with battery still removed).
Press the power button.

Going through the rigamarole above sometimes gets the screen going
after a few seconds, other times the computer just sits dark and quiet
for five minutes or so before it suddenly boots up. (Which is what it
did the first time this nonsense started, no help from Dell.)

Twice by remote connection Dell fiddled with my power management
settings. That seemed to fix the problem for only a week or so.
Holding down the "Fn" key simulataneously with the power button to go
into diagnostics revealed no hardware or software problems.

This morning (the fourth time I have called Dell about this), the Dell
guy over in India/Pakistan/Phillipines (or wherever) recommended that I
send it in to the Dell repair depot. He sounded fairly certain that
the problem will pop up again. It could take 5 to 8 days for repair to
resolve the problem. I need my laptop for my job, I can't go without
it for more than a day, let alone a week. His response: "you'll just
have to bite the bullet". Yeah, right--bite my termination notice,
pal.

I think Dell knows what's wrong with this Inspiron 6000, maybe a defect
related to power or bootup that puts the computer into an immediate
disabling loop of some kind. But they ain't saying what it is.

Nancy wrote:
We lost power here about a month ago, and ever since then, it takes a
ridiculously long time to power up my Dell Inspiron 6000 notebook. I've
looked at the power settings and everything looks ok. I don't have any large
files stored - I mainly use this for email and browsing the internet.

Any ideas/advice would be much appreciated.
Thank you.

key words: dark screen won't start problem with bootup won't bootup
won't boot up black screen startup loop