My brand new, less-than-a-month-old Dell Inspiron laptop won't boot.
So. I bought a Dell laptop from NewEgg last month, for potential-employment related reasons, and because I'd been wanting to get a laptop for a long while now anyway, and this was as good an excuse to finally buy one as any. (Current price on NewEgg says $899, but it was $549 when I bought it last month. Also, when I bought it, it was from NewEgg directly, and not from some third party crap like what it's showing now, as of the typing of this post.)
Today, I was running the laptop. It was working perfectly fine and dandy. I was checking gmail and such. I shut the laptop down (i.e. the usual way for Windows 8.1, clicking the "power button" on the Start screen and selecting shutdown, just to be crystal clear that I didn't do anything weird or out of the ordinary). I decided after a minute or so, though, that I'd shut it down prematurely and that I needed to turn it back on again to do something else. When I pressed the power button to turn it back on, the power light came on (though it was flashing on and off at intervals of on for 10 seconds, off for 5 seconds, with the normal white light), but the laptop itself did not boot. The screen simply remained dark, and none of the other front lights (harddrive, battery, wifi) ever lit up. Also, when I simply plug in the AC adapter with the battery installed, regardless of whether or not I try to start it, the battery light never comes on now, implying that it's not even trying to charge the battery or otherwise isn't connecting to the battery in some way (and yet, it still does the same blinky stuff with the power light when it's only the battery connected as it does when the adapter is plugged in, which means the laptop itself is still getting at least that much power from the battery alone, so... I don't know. *shrug*)
Long story short, here is what I've tried on my own so far:
1. I took the battery out, held the power button for 60+ seconds in order to discharge whatever remaining charge was in the laptop itself, because that was something that DuckDuckGo/Google searching suggested as a potential solution. Static build-up, or some shit like that, supposedly. I tried powering on the laptop with the AC adapter plugged in, both with and without the battery reinstalled. I tried powering on the laptop with only the battery installed and the adapter unplugged. (Just to note, the battery was at 97% charge when I shut it down initially, before all the bullshit started.) Same result, no matter what. The power light came on and flashed on and off in 10-seconds-on/5-seconds-off intervals with the usual blue/white light, but the computer itself simply wouldn't boot.
2. After looking up the owner's manual on the Dell site[1], I followed the instructions for removing the memory sticks, then reseated them, and then retried step 1, as this was another thing that the Internet suggested as a potential solution. Same result.
So that's the first issue. Here is the second issue.
Before, during, and after all of the above, I'd visited the Dell website to try to mess around with technical support to see what I could find. According to Dell technical support, for some unknown reason, the warranty on my laptop ran from February 6, 2014 to September 5, 2015. I bought the laptop from NewEgg on October 9, 2015 and received it via UPS on October 13, 2015. In other words, the fucking warranty for the laptop apparently expired one month and four days before I ever even bought the goddamn thing. My guess is that they started the clock ticking on the warranty when NewEgg bought the thing from Dell to resell in their own store, or however the fuck such a thing works. That's bullshit, if that's the case, but it honestly wouldn't surprise me. As long as Dell fixes the situation when I call them, then it won't be too big of a deal, I guess. But if they won't fix the warranty issue... *enraged face with steam coming out of ears*
So. Now I am going to have to call Dell at some point (and, just to note, I've already tried the utterly useless web chat thing, to absolutely no avail, since the guy just said that I'd need to call anyway), probably waiting until daytime hours tomorrow, and see about first getting the warranty updated, if possible. Then, second, I am going to have to try to figure out what the fuck is wrong with the laptop itself.
In the meantime, since I'm not going to call Dell tonight, I'm just going to leave the battery out of the laptop entirely, and just let the whole thing sit overnight and then try it again tomorrow. If it boots up tomorrow, that'll be great, but I'll still need to call Dell in any case to get this warranty shit corrected, in case anything else happens down the line. If they try to fuck me around on the warranty thing, I'm going to raise as much hell as I can possibly raise, that's a fact.
This is an incredibly aggravating load of headache-inducing horseshit, I'll tell you that for free. I really, truly hope I don't end up having to return the damn thing to NewEgg or Dell or whoever for a replacement, assuming I'd even be able to do that. -_-
[1] - (Note, from here on down is all part of this same [1] footnote, even though I'm going to put some line breaks in for readability's sake.)
For some asinine reason, I can't directly link to the PDF file, because the "Owner's Manual_en-us.pdf" bit in the url for the PDF file is getting replaced in my LJ post as "Owner(&)quot(;)s(%)20Manual_en-us.pdf", with (&) and (;) and the like being replaced with the actual characters without the parentheses, of course. The (%)20 bit is fine, because it's the code for a single space, but the (&)quot(;) is a problem because (&)quot(;) is the code for a fucking double quote, not the single quote/apostrophe that it should actually be, and originally was. I even tried replacing the (&)quot(;) explicitly with (&)(#)39(;), but it still gets replaced in preview and the actual post with (&)quot(;).
For reference, (&)(#)39(;) is supposed to be a single quote/apostrophe, whereas (&)(#)34(;) is supposed to be a double quote. Here is a test. (&)(#)39(;): ' and (&)(#)34(;): " and, for good measure, (&)quot(;): " which all show up correctly for me here in the post display itself (that is, it's a single quote followed by two double quotes), but when I try to include (&)(#)39(;) in the html for the url for the owner's manual, it still gets fucking replaced with (&)quot(;) for no good reason, same as if I just left the simple ' itself in there.
Here is the actual link, without trying to put it behind tags: http://downloads.dell.com/Manuals/all-products/esuprt_laptop/esuprt_inspiron_laptop/inspiron-15-3537_Owner's%20Manual_en-us.pdf Assuming that you're seeing the same things I'm seeing, notice how the automatic hyperlink-ization of that breaks right there at the single quote in "Owner's Manual", or "Owner's(%)20Manual" depending on whichever version you might actually be seeing, with everything after it not being a link (again, for me it's doing that, at any rate). If you copy/paste that directly into your browser, it should actually work, I guess, but still.
Also, as I mentioned, if I try to enclose that in an Owner's Manual bit of html, it just doesn't fucking work, for similar reasons. Because the literal single quote, or the (&)(#)39(;) code, gets replaced with an (&)quot(;), which is not a single quote but a double quote, thus leading to a 404 not found page if you click it. Here, try it yourself, and see how that errant (&)quot(;) incorrectly appears in the url. That "try it yourself" link there was entered into LJ as try it yourself (again, without the parentheses), and the (&)(#)39(;) does indeed get incorrectly replaced with (&)quot(;) for no valid reason that I can decipher.
Just for the hell of it, I also tried using an escape code for the single quote, i.e. (\)' (without the parentheses) or backslash-apostrophe, but that didn't work either. Test: http://downloads.dell.com/Manuals/all-products/esuprt_laptop/esuprt_inspiron_laptop/inspiron-15-3537_Owner\'s%20Manual_en-us.pdf Yep, still breaks at the apostrophe.
And that, right there, was issue number three, which stymied me for a little while before I just said fuck it and linked to the outer page, instead of trying to link directly to the PDF file. Fucking sheesh.
(But then I went and spent probably more time writing this footnote to explain this weird, mostly unrelated, broken html issue than I did writing the original post itself to rant about the currently non-functional laptop and the bullshit with the warranty, so... meh. In any case, this is not the first time I've ever ran into this issue with the (&)quot(;) shit, but it's the first time I've bothered to rant about it at length, at least that I can recall.)
(EDIT) I have found a workaround for this on my own. If you use (%)27 in place of the ' or (&)(#)39(;) in the code, then it properly places the apostrophe/single-quote like it should. Here is a test... yep, it works now. Now, granted, that still doesn't fix the broken issue of it being replaced by (&)quot(;) if you do just use a ' or (&)(#)39(;) in the code, but at least the (%)27 isn't getting incorrectly replaced by (&)quot(;) in the code. The only problem with this workaround is that it still doesn't work within tags like and![]()
tags. (/EDIT)
Today, I was running the laptop. It was working perfectly fine and dandy. I was checking gmail and such. I shut the laptop down (i.e. the usual way for Windows 8.1, clicking the "power button" on the Start screen and selecting shutdown, just to be crystal clear that I didn't do anything weird or out of the ordinary). I decided after a minute or so, though, that I'd shut it down prematurely and that I needed to turn it back on again to do something else. When I pressed the power button to turn it back on, the power light came on (though it was flashing on and off at intervals of on for 10 seconds, off for 5 seconds, with the normal white light), but the laptop itself did not boot. The screen simply remained dark, and none of the other front lights (harddrive, battery, wifi) ever lit up. Also, when I simply plug in the AC adapter with the battery installed, regardless of whether or not I try to start it, the battery light never comes on now, implying that it's not even trying to charge the battery or otherwise isn't connecting to the battery in some way (and yet, it still does the same blinky stuff with the power light when it's only the battery connected as it does when the adapter is plugged in, which means the laptop itself is still getting at least that much power from the battery alone, so... I don't know. *shrug*)
Long story short, here is what I've tried on my own so far:
1. I took the battery out, held the power button for 60+ seconds in order to discharge whatever remaining charge was in the laptop itself, because that was something that DuckDuckGo/Google searching suggested as a potential solution. Static build-up, or some shit like that, supposedly. I tried powering on the laptop with the AC adapter plugged in, both with and without the battery reinstalled. I tried powering on the laptop with only the battery installed and the adapter unplugged. (Just to note, the battery was at 97% charge when I shut it down initially, before all the bullshit started.) Same result, no matter what. The power light came on and flashed on and off in 10-seconds-on/5-seconds-off intervals with the usual blue/white light, but the computer itself simply wouldn't boot.
2. After looking up the owner's manual on the Dell site[1], I followed the instructions for removing the memory sticks, then reseated them, and then retried step 1, as this was another thing that the Internet suggested as a potential solution. Same result.
So that's the first issue. Here is the second issue.
Before, during, and after all of the above, I'd visited the Dell website to try to mess around with technical support to see what I could find. According to Dell technical support, for some unknown reason, the warranty on my laptop ran from February 6, 2014 to September 5, 2015. I bought the laptop from NewEgg on October 9, 2015 and received it via UPS on October 13, 2015. In other words, the fucking warranty for the laptop apparently expired one month and four days before I ever even bought the goddamn thing. My guess is that they started the clock ticking on the warranty when NewEgg bought the thing from Dell to resell in their own store, or however the fuck such a thing works. That's bullshit, if that's the case, but it honestly wouldn't surprise me. As long as Dell fixes the situation when I call them, then it won't be too big of a deal, I guess. But if they won't fix the warranty issue... *enraged face with steam coming out of ears*
So. Now I am going to have to call Dell at some point (and, just to note, I've already tried the utterly useless web chat thing, to absolutely no avail, since the guy just said that I'd need to call anyway), probably waiting until daytime hours tomorrow, and see about first getting the warranty updated, if possible. Then, second, I am going to have to try to figure out what the fuck is wrong with the laptop itself.
In the meantime, since I'm not going to call Dell tonight, I'm just going to leave the battery out of the laptop entirely, and just let the whole thing sit overnight and then try it again tomorrow. If it boots up tomorrow, that'll be great, but I'll still need to call Dell in any case to get this warranty shit corrected, in case anything else happens down the line. If they try to fuck me around on the warranty thing, I'm going to raise as much hell as I can possibly raise, that's a fact.
This is an incredibly aggravating load of headache-inducing horseshit, I'll tell you that for free. I really, truly hope I don't end up having to return the damn thing to NewEgg or Dell or whoever for a replacement, assuming I'd even be able to do that. -_-
[1] - (Note, from here on down is all part of this same [1] footnote, even though I'm going to put some line breaks in for readability's sake.)
For some asinine reason, I can't directly link to the PDF file, because the "Owner's Manual_en-us.pdf" bit in the url for the PDF file is getting replaced in my LJ post as "Owner(&)quot(;)s(%)20Manual_en-us.pdf", with (&) and (;) and the like being replaced with the actual characters without the parentheses, of course. The (%)20 bit is fine, because it's the code for a single space, but the (&)quot(;) is a problem because (&)quot(;) is the code for a fucking double quote, not the single quote/apostrophe that it should actually be, and originally was. I even tried replacing the (&)quot(;) explicitly with (&)(#)39(;), but it still gets replaced in preview and the actual post with (&)quot(;).
For reference, (&)(#)39(;) is supposed to be a single quote/apostrophe, whereas (&)(#)34(;) is supposed to be a double quote. Here is a test. (&)(#)39(;): ' and (&)(#)34(;): " and, for good measure, (&)quot(;): " which all show up correctly for me here in the post display itself (that is, it's a single quote followed by two double quotes), but when I try to include (&)(#)39(;) in the html for the url for the owner's manual, it still gets fucking replaced with (&)quot(;) for no good reason, same as if I just left the simple ' itself in there.
Here is the actual link, without trying to put it behind tags: http://downloads.dell.com/Manuals/all-products/esuprt_laptop/esuprt_inspiron_laptop/inspiron-15-3537_Owner's%20Manual_en-us.pdf Assuming that you're seeing the same things I'm seeing, notice how the automatic hyperlink-ization of that breaks right there at the single quote in "Owner's Manual", or "Owner's(%)20Manual" depending on whichever version you might actually be seeing, with everything after it not being a link (again, for me it's doing that, at any rate). If you copy/paste that directly into your browser, it should actually work, I guess, but still.
Also, as I mentioned, if I try to enclose that in an Owner's Manual bit of html, it just doesn't fucking work, for similar reasons. Because the literal single quote, or the (&)(#)39(;) code, gets replaced with an (&)quot(;), which is not a single quote but a double quote, thus leading to a 404 not found page if you click it. Here, try it yourself, and see how that errant (&)quot(;) incorrectly appears in the url. That "try it yourself" link there was entered into LJ as try it yourself (again, without the parentheses), and the (&)(#)39(;) does indeed get incorrectly replaced with (&)quot(;) for no valid reason that I can decipher.
Just for the hell of it, I also tried using an escape code for the single quote, i.e. (\)' (without the parentheses) or backslash-apostrophe, but that didn't work either. Test: http://downloads.dell.com/Manuals/all-products/esuprt_laptop/esuprt_inspiron_laptop/inspiron-15-3537_Owner\'s%20Manual_en-us.pdf Yep, still breaks at the apostrophe.
And that, right there, was issue number three, which stymied me for a little while before I just said fuck it and linked to the outer page, instead of trying to link directly to the PDF file. Fucking sheesh.
(But then I went and spent probably more time writing this footnote to explain this weird, mostly unrelated, broken html issue than I did writing the original post itself to rant about the currently non-functional laptop and the bullshit with the warranty, so... meh. In any case, this is not the first time I've ever ran into this issue with the (&)quot(;) shit, but it's the first time I've bothered to rant about it at length, at least that I can recall.)
(EDIT) I have found a workaround for this on my own. If you use (%)27 in place of the ' or (&)(#)39(;) in the code, then it properly places the apostrophe/single-quote like it should. Here is a test... yep, it works now. Now, granted, that still doesn't fix the broken issue of it being replaced by (&)quot(;) if you do just use a ' or (&)(#)39(;) in the code, but at least the (%)27 isn't getting incorrectly replaced by (&)quot(;) in the code. The only problem with this workaround is that it still doesn't work within tags like and
tags. (/EDIT)