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[solved] Dell Latitude E7470 suddenly won't boot

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Onsemeliot
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[solved] Dell Latitude E7470 suddenly won't boot

#1 Post by Onsemeliot »

My colleague has a Dell Latitude E7470 and after a week on holiday it won't boot any longer. I now have it with me.
  • With only battery but without power connection not even the power button shows a light when I try to turn it on.
  • Without battery the power button lights up automatically as soon as I plug it in. (The power button doesn't do anything.) But the screen stays black. I guess it isn't designed to work without any battery since it can only be removed when opening the bottom of the case.
  • If the battery is in and it is connected to a power supply the screen shows the Dell logo after a while but it doesn't do anything else. I can't turn off the system. Even if I keep pressing the power button for at least 10 seconds. And the device gets very warm rather quickly around the power plug. And it doesn't seem to load the battery because it has been sitting plugged in (showing the Dell logo) for about a day without any change in behaviour.
Do you have experience how to diagnose what the problem is? I don't want to order a new battery without knowing if it actually is the broken part. The battery doesn't look bloated.
Last edited by Onsemeliot on 2022-06-22 10:33, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Dell Latitude E7470 suddenly won't boot

#2 Post by FreewheelinFrank »

Try a hard reset and resetting the real-time clock, as described in the post and video here:

https://www.dell.com/community/Laptops- ... ue#M941701

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Re: Dell Latitude E7470 suddenly won't boot

#3 Post by Onsemeliot »

Unfortunately the hard reset didn't work. As soon as I plug-in the device it is turned on and holding the button doesn't do anything. Therefore I am pretty sure the device didn't do what it should do in this guide.

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Re: Dell Latitude E7470 suddenly won't boot

#4 Post by Onsemeliot »

I bought an other identical used system and put the SSD from the old system into it. It still wouldn't find any system to boot. So I created a backup of the user data using a life USB stick and the "dd" command in combination with tar. Then I made a clean install on the same disk and replaced the newly created user folder with the one from my backup. Now everything works as expected. So I could at least provide a usable system to my colleague again.

Unfortunately, the old system is still a mystery. Without the power plugged in it won't start at all. As soon as I connect the power cable it will instantly be switched on but it will only ever show the Dell logo. It seems like there is a problem with the power delivery. I am puzzled by the fact that it even shows the logo (in perfect quality).

So it seems the old laptop developed two issues at the same time. The boot configuration on the hard disk got messed up and the power supply suddenly has an issue. Most likely the hardware issue caused the boot configuration to fail. But I can't tell how this would even be possible. Especially since my colleague told me that it worked fine and a week later it suddenly wouldn't boot any more. Something like this seems only sensible when the system lost power during a sensitive upgrade. But without it this behaviour seems strange.

I'm uncertain if it would be financially sensible to bring the old device to a repair shop. It isn't the newest device any longer and the problem could be difficult. On the other hand the EU has issued a financial incentive for repairing broken electronics available until the budget runs out. I would only need to pay half of the repair costs (for up to 400 Euros per device). But most likely the power isn't distributed properly any longer on the main board. And it might not be easy to fix the board itself – even if it is possible to find the exact point of failure.

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