The Dell laptop shuts down unpredictably and won't turn on.
The Dell laptop shuts down unpredictably and won't turn on.
My 10-year-old Dell Inspiron running WIN 10 home suddenly stopped working without any reason. While I was working, the screen went black and didn’t respond to the keyboard or mouse. The power indicator stayed on. To fully shut it down, I had to keep pressing the power button for a few seconds. After restarting, most of the time it returned to its previous state, which led me to believe it had entered sleep mode. I set the power option to never turn off the screen or put it to sleep, whether plugged in or on battery. Still, it failed.
The laptop was connected almost all the time—about 99.9% of the time. Its battery always showed 100% charge. I ran a Dell diagnostic for an hour without any issues. When I tried to run the laptop without the battery, the problem didn’t occur. I’m not surprised by a dead battery on such an old machine, but since it was always plugged in, it wasn’t a complete power failure. It seems like a signal was telling the computer to sleep instead of waking up. A replacement battery costs around $30 on Amazon. However, I want to check if there’s another problem before buying one.