Computer won't boot. Fans spin a moment and stop in a cycle.

[ernmcburn]

I have dell xps 8700. I've had it for 2 1/2 years now. It stopped working in late october. My brother was playing DayZ. The game froze and he pressed crtl-alt-Delete a couple times. He turned the computer off and ever since then when I start it it starts a cycle with the fans spinning and stopping repeating. I got dell to run a hardware test and they said it was software. After that it worked for a bit and gave me a windows kernel error. I'm on windows 10. And it's back to the cycle again. What should I do?

 

[Laptop_Nerd]

Hi,

Does it still show the splash screen or can you still load BIOS? Here are some troubleshooting steps that may help in solving the issue.
- First is to unplug other devices connected to your PC.
- Do a hard reset, unplug the power cord then press and hold the power button for 20 seconds then see if it will boot up normally.
- Also do try and reseat the RAM, remove them all for couple of seconds then put them back in making sure that they are all seated properly into each slot.
- Next is to also test each RAM, boot the PC with 1 RAM after another.
- If all these will not work the problem lies in the motherboard of your laptop.

 

[ernmcburn]

Hi,

Does it still show the splash screen or can you still load BIOS? Here are some troubleshooting steps that may help in solving the issue.
- First is to unplug other devices connected to your PC.
- Do a hard reset, unplug the power cord then press and hold the power button for 20 seconds then see if it will boot up normally.
- Also do try and reseat the RAM, remove them all for couple of seconds then put them back in making sure that they are all seated properly into each slot.
- Next is to also test each RAM, boot the PC with 1 RAM after another.
- If all these will not work the problem lies in the motherboard of your laptop.

How would this help a software problem. And the test said the ram was fine. I can't even get it to show a screen it spins and stops so quickly.
Plus it is a desktop.

 

[Bill2002]

Hi,

Does it still show the splash screen or can you still load BIOS? Here are some troubleshooting steps that may help in solving the issue.
- First is to unplug other devices connected to your PC.
- Do a hard reset, unplug the power cord then press and hold the power button for 20 seconds then see if it will boot up normally.
- Also do try and reseat the RAM, remove them all for couple of seconds then put them back in making sure that they are all seated properly into each slot.
- Next is to also test each RAM, boot the PC with 1 RAM after another.
- If all these will not work the problem lies in the motherboard of your laptop.

How would this help a software problem. And the test said the ram was fine. I can't even get it to show a screen it spins and stops so quickly.
Plus it is a desktop.

I suspect the power supply. When in doubt, those little suckers are often the cause of many unknown problems. If your sure that's not it, you can try to unplug everything except for the bare minimums. Try taking out the CMOS battery, try a different power supply, it could be a dead MOBO/CPU, I had that exact same computer, with the exact same problem and it turned out the motherboard needed to be replaced. It then worked perfectly.