Dell Inspiron keeps switching off.

[conny]

@IT Minion (cos I know you are in IT), or anyone else that may be able to help.

I have a Dell Inspiron laptop, about 2 years old, and each day it will suddenly just die. Sometimes it will re-boot and restart again, sometimes if I press Enter it will come back up but other times I have to press the power button. It can often stop and start again but quite often requires me to push something. When it does die I have to log back in and it will ask if I want to restore the page I was on. I've run Norton deep scan which showed nothing and sometimes when it does re-start it will go through a self diagnosis but usually finds no problem. Other times it will say "Windows failed to load properly".

Can anyone shed any light on the problem and what I may be able to do to sort it out please?

 

[chalkywhite]

If it's not a weak battery, then sounds like a driver issue. Were any drivers recently upgraded, these could be rolled back under Device Manager.
Take a look in device Manager for any drivers with problems, marked with an exclamation mark

 

[IT Minion]

Its not a good sign. Before you do anything else make sure you've backed up any important files. Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive and so on are all decent options.

When you're pressing enter to revive it that sounds more like it is going to sleep/hibernating than restarting. That's normal on laptops but you can turn it off in the power settings. If it has gone to sleep then having to log in again is also normal.

The bit where you get the checking for errors screen is more of a concern, but debugging intermittent issues is often very hard.

 

[conny]

@chalkywhite Took a look in Device manager and can't find any explanation marks. I even clicked on every little arrow next to each item to open them and still no exclamation marks. Thanks for the suggestion.

 

[conny]

@IT Minon Yes I understand the sleep function after periods of inactivity but this will happen when I am in the middle of typing something.
Currently in the process of backing up my files to an external hard drive, thanks.

 

[conny]

Just to let you all know. A slide window opened earlier from Dell Support so I had a look at it. It performed a number of functions including hardware and software full scan, file clean up, diagnostics and advised on 6 updates. I downloaded the updates which included the latest bios version so hopefully it will have sorted the problem.

I'll let you know in a few days if it appears to be ok. Thanks for your replies guys.

 

[EddieM]

Overheating maybe?

 

[conny]

I could sometimes hear the fan kick in and when it was doing the updates it was running continuously so I think the fan is ok but thanks for the suggestion Ed.

 

[conny]

Well the bad news is it continued to happen despite downloading the latest drivers etc.
The good news is my wife secretly bought me a new Acer Aspire 5. Not as much storage, (500Gb I think instead of 1Tb, but as I still had over 800Gb on the other one I don't think I'm missing anything. I always back up important things to my external drive anyway.
Could have been an expensive weekend but thanks to my wife, again, it wasn't. Dropped my phone a few weeks ago and cracked the screen but it continued to work. Friday afternoon it gave up the ghost and refused register one of my pin codes. As my contacts weren't on my Sim I lost them all. Been contacting all the companies, (banks, insurances etc), that I have dealings with to notify them of my new number. Luckily my wife has my sons number so I could let him know and then get the kids numbers off him. Need to get my bosses number, and all the builders numbers I had, tomorrow.

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

If it is random and after being in use for a while, I would suggest over heating. They call them 'laptops', but on your lap the cooling air vents can become obstructed. They can also collect a lot of dust and fluff obstructing the vents. Worthwhile sometimes blowing the vents through with an airline.

 

[conny]

Thats what I suspected originally but my lovely wife bought me a laptop 'stand' a few months ago.
It's basically a cushioned board that sits on your lap with the laptop on the board so there is a clear air flow. When I'm not using that I always have it on the breakfast table which doesn't have a table cloth on it.
If I get chance, (and the courage), I may open it up and give it a good clean with a can of compressed air and a vacuum cleaner.

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

Thats what I suspected originally but my lovely wife bought me a laptop 'stand' a few months ago.

Snap, mine bought me one for Christmas - I think she got fed up of the home made piece of ply I was using

The new one has 'bean bag' cushions underneath and the upper surface can be propped up to tilt the laptop.

 

[IT Minion]

Well the bad news is it continued to happen despite downloading the latest drivers etc.
The good news is my wife secretly bought me a new Acer Aspire 5. Not as much storage, (500Gb I think instead of 1Tb, but as I still had over 800Gb on the other one I don't think I'm missing anything. I always back up important things to my external drive anyway.
Could have been an expensive weekend but thanks to my wife, again, it wasn't. Dropped my phone a few weeks ago and cracked the screen but it continued to work. Friday afternoon it gave up the ghost and refused register one of my pin codes. As my contacts weren't on my Sim I lost them all. Been contacting all the companies, (banks, insurances etc), that I have dealings with to notify them of my new number. Luckily my wife has my sons number so I could let him know and then get the kids numbers off him. Need to get my bosses number, and all the builders numbers I had, tomorrow.

If it's an android phone or an iPhone then unless you've deliberately stopped it then I'd expect those numbers to be synchronised into the cloud.

You should also be able to port your old number, even assuming you don't just pull the SIM out of the old device.

 

[conny]

It was an Iphone and I don't understand things about a Cloud or porting to be honest.
I'm an old fogey when it comes to technology to be honest.

 

[fiskrond]

Dell's consumer grade PC/laptops tend to hitchhike on the reputation of their business grade kit.
Depending on the model you have.. (which one?).. it could be thrashing the CPU/GPU depending on what you are using it for..
I would also go with the behaviour being symptomatic of overheating.
Laptops in general suffer from overheating as there is physically not enough space to fit an effective cooling system.. run to 'standard' performance in lab environment enables their marketing claims.. however in real life usage they generally don't live up to expectation