Windows 10 boots to blank screen

Hello people,
It has been a while since I posted. I have a Dell Inspiron N5050 laptop that is giving me fits. It was having an issue with explorer restarting continuously after it was upgraded from windows 7 by the customer. I recommended a clean install and backed up all their data and installed Windows 10. I pulled the latest drivers from dell.com and made sure I had them handy. At boot up the machine boots to a blank screen and boot chime plays. no mouse cursor and ctrl, alt, del do nothing. I found that if I press the power button and put it to sleep then wake it up with the power button it works fine. works for the whole time I am messing with it. If I reboot or power down I get the blank screen. I updated the chipset, video and audio drivers one at a time with a reboot each time and still no change. This only occurs during a reboot or cold boot. If the PC goes to sleep it wakes just fine.

I am at a loss as to the cause. There is no blue screen logs and I cant see anything wrong in the event viewer. No programs have been installed yet and Windows is fully updated.

Specs for the machine as follows:

Computer Model Inspiron N5050

BIOS Vendor Dell Inc.

BIOS Version A03

BIOS Date 10/14/2011

OS Version Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium upgraded to 10

Processor

Manufacturer Intel(R) Pentium(R) CPU B950 @ 2.10GHz

Clock Speed 2.1Ghz

L2 Cache Size 512

Memory

DIMM_A 4,096.0MB

DIMM_B 2,048.0MB

Network Card

Adaptor Description

Storage

Drive C:

Type 3

Drive Size 931.4GB

Total Available Space 911.8GB

Used Space 19.7GB

Drive D:

Type 5

Drive Size 3.1GB

Total Available Space 0.0GB

Used Space 3.1GB

Drive E:

Type 2

Drive Size

Total Available Space

Used Space

Hardware

Type Description

DVD/CD-ROM Drives HL-DT-ST DVD+-RW GT60N ATA Device

Disk Drives WDC WD10JPVX-00JC3T0 ATA Device Generic- Multi-Card USB Device

Display Adapters Standard VGA Graphics Adapter

IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers Standard AHCI 1.0 Serial ATA Controller ATA Channel 0 ATA Channel 4

Keyboards,Mice & Pointing Devices USB Input Device PS/2 Compatible Mouse

Monitors Generic PnP Monitor

Sound Devices High Definition Audio Device High Definition Audio Device

USB Controllers Standard Enhanced PCI to USB Host Controller Standard Enhanced PCI to USB Host Controller

I don't have this Laptop but looking at the BIOS A03 dated in 2011. Google it and the latest version is A05. You might want to update the BIOS first.

In addition, try to boot with one stick of RAM since they are not a matched pair (4GB & 2GB) and might create timing issue on cold boot.

Just to be clear, does this problem occur after the POST and during BIOS/UEFI boot, or afterward, during Windows start up? (can you see any BIOS/UEFI splash screens?)

Some of these new laptops start without showing any BIOS startup screens, so it can be misleading trying to determine where in the process the problem occurs. As you know, the BIOS hands off after initializing the hard drives.

topgundcp said:

I don't have this Laptop but looking at the BIOS A03 dated in 2011. Google it and the latest version is A05. You might want to update the BIOS first.

In addition, try to boot with one stick of RAM since they are not a matched pair (4GB & 2GB) and might create timing issue on cold boot.

The specs are from Dell direct. The Ram is oem installed but I did try with each stick removed. The Bios is A05 and I verified with Dells Bios flash tool.

TV2 said:

Just to be clear, does this problem occur after the POST and during BIOS/UEFI boot, or afterward, during Windows start up? (can you see any BIOS/UEFI splash screens?)

Some of these new laptops start without showing any BIOS startup screens, so it can be misleading trying to determine where in the process the problem occurs. As you know, the BIOS hands off after initializing the hard drives.

The issue occurs after post and during windows loading. One odd issue is that there are times I see the white Win loading flag and circle for a brief moment before the blank screen and other times it goes from the Dell logo directly to the blank screen. There is no rhyme or reason for either. I have tried safe mode as well as Diagnostic startup via msconfig, Still does it.

I'm going to throw this out there just to see if may help.

I had a new Toshiba laptop here that I bought with Windows 10 pre-installed. Everything ran as expected.
As I am accustomed to do, I wiped the drive and installed Windows 10 clean. The install went smooth and everything was working fine - except: the laptop would now not come out of Sleep Mode without a "Critical Process Died" Bluescreen.

I beat my head until I thought to check the Toshiba website forums and found a similar power related problem posted. A Toshiba rep posted a link to a fix. It was a batch file that installed two lines in the registry. Both files made changes to iaStor. Completely solved the problem.

It seems that these registry "adjustments" are made by Toshiba to address the problem. When I clean installed, I lost those changes.

I suspect that Windows 10 is doing something different with Power Management and AHCI drivers. And these patches are necessary to get existing drivers (either OEM drivers or Windows drivers) to work correctly with the OS.

I offer this because I wonder if your start up problem also has to do with Power Management and/or SATA AHCI driver problems. Not much to go on, but might give you a direction to look in.

Solved Blue Screen on returning from Sleep Mode - Toshiba Laptop - Page 4 - Windows 10 Forums

What version of chipset did you update ? The latest is: 10.1.2.10
Also did you try to boot up in Safe Mode using the generic video driver ?

topgundcp said:

What version of chipset did you update ? The latest is: 10.1.2.10
Also did you try to boot up in Safe Mode using the generic video driver ?

The last I found on Dell was Version 9.2.0.1019,A00 so I will have to look for the 10.1.2.10. Also yes I tried safe mode with the generic vga driver.

EDIT: Ok tried the Intel driver posted here on the site but the installer comes back as hardware not supported.

Mohave PC said:

The last I found on Dell was Version 9.2.0.1019,A00 so I will have to look for the 10.1.2.10. Also yes I tried safe mode with the generic vga driver.

EDIT: Ok tried the Intel driver posted here on the site but the installer comes back as hardware not supported.

This is not solved but time is up on fighting it. I have convinced customer to set it back to se7ven for now. They are going to upgrade to a new PC in 2 to 3 months and we will transfer everything then. It seems that this particular machine has an Issue with 10 that is unsolvable and since it is not supported anymore it is time to move on. Thanks for trying though.