Laptop Failure

[Reemul]

Woke up this morning to a laptop in bios mode. Save and exit or restore does nothing. Not 100 % sure but it looks like my main drive does not exist any more. A windows update failed in the day and I scheduled it to run over night. Laptop is always on and has shown zero issues.

Not sure what to do now any thoughts much apprecuated

[Anonymous Bosch]

Assuming you have access to another system, I'd suggest downloading and using a bootable rescue disc/flash drive such as Hiren's BootCD, which contains a wealth of useful diagnostic and repair tools.

[Punisher]

Also try these:
In BIOS verify that it even sees the drive somewhere
If it does, make sure it is the first boot option.

If it sees it, but it's not the first boot option, change it so it is.

If it sees it and it's in the boot option, look for a UEFI setting and toggle that.

If it doesn't even see the drive, see if your BIOS has an auto-detect for hard drives and run it.

After these if you can't get BIOS to even see the drive, a boot disk won't work. drive may be dead or motherboard connection. If it's the drive, you'd have to replace it.

[lempets]

I think that is some problem with a hardware

[Kasey Chang]

I had to redo my entire Win10, and apparently my laptop battery was completely dead. WTF? Left it overnight with laptop in sleep mode... does not recharge AT ALL.

[Kasey Chang]

After a full BIOS reset, unplug, and reseat battery status has changed to "charging" instead of "not charging", but so far, nothing charging (still showing 0%). I may have to reseat the AC adapter as well (this is a genuine XPS adapter with 150 watts)

EDIT: BIOS confirms that laptop is seeing the genuine 150W adapter, so the only other reason this wasn't charging is the stupid battery itself, not that I ever use it on battery power any way. Checking the adapter shows that there is a little bit of a sleeve break around one side, will have to put some Sugru (tm) on it soon. Battery is not rising out of 0%, despite battery meter showing only 0.6% wear.

[Jeff V]

I had to redo my entire Win10, and apparently my laptop battery was completely dead. WTF? Left it overnight with laptop in sleep mode... does not recharge AT ALL.

Batteries will do that sometimes.

[Punisher]

shut laptop down. unplug. take out battery. Press button to turn on. wait 10 seconds. put battery back in and plug back in and turn on.

[Kasey Chang]

Just did that. Now the battery icon says "plugged in, charging", but the capacity remained at 0%. Not charging at all.

EDIT: Dell diagnostics confirmed that battery is toast.

Replacement batteries are only $20 or so on Amazon. *sigh* Maybe I should just BUY one.

[Kasey Chang]

Battery apparently is slow and won't get here till Monday despite placing order last night. Oh well, I always use it on AC power any way.

Also lost drivers to my regular USB scanner, had to pull out my alternate scanner that requires a manual surface. Good thing I already bought a "laptop cart" which I assembled W/O wheels as my left side table to complete my "workstation".

But the new Win10 boots up in SECONDS, instead of a minute on the original setup. So I guess it's not a total disaster.