XPS 8950, no boot after entering the PIN

Question

XPS 8950 will not boot after the PIN is entered. The screen goes black and stays that way. I have tried to enter the bios menu with F2 or F12 but that does nothing. From power up, I get the Dell logo and it goes right on the the profile screen and waits for the PIN. After entering the pin, the small dots circle around for at least a minute before the screen just goes to black. I have also discovered that I can access the machine via another Win 10 machine on the same network and I have access to my user files. Prior to this, I had done a system restore but that process reported that it did not work and that no changes were made. But I was stuck at that screen and had to do a power down to continue. On the subsequent power up, is where I am at the moment.

Any and all ideas appreciated.

redxps630 · Answer

Someone suggested the following and a lot of users found it helpful

Press Control + Shift + Esc

This should open Task Manager

Click File > Run new task
Type: devmgmt.msc

Hit Enter

Expand Display adapters
Right click the current display adapter
Click Uninstall
Exit Device Manager

Click File > Run new task
Type: shutdown -r -t 0

merkelck · Answer

Thanks for the reply. However, it did not work for me. The steps worked for the most part but with no correction of the issue. I can tell that the display adapter is working by the fact that both of my monitors actually go to black. You can tell the difference in the black screen and a "Dead" screen. The other difference I noticed was that when the system starts now, it displays a different splash screen than what I was seeing before. But it still shows the profile screen with the box for entering the PIN but after short period of the circling dots, it all goes black. One other thing that I have noticed is that when the screen goes to sleep, it still produces the pattern that I have always used for the screen saver which actually displays over both monitors.

redxps630 · Answer

A more drastic measure is to do a complete wipe of ssd/hdd and clean install of Windows. It is actually not as bad as it may sound because modern fast pc can have OS install done in a matter of 15-20 min. To do that you need to boot from a usb flash drive containing Win10 installation media. Any data is wiped after clean install.

Re: I can access the machine via another Win 10 machine on the same network and I have access to

back up your old data first before clean install.

merkelck · Answer

After sleeping on this overnight, I think I have an answer. First of all the bad machine is running WIN 11. The machine that is still running is WIN10. But the saving grace may just be that I have the W11 machine backed up on my NAS and I should be able to just recover the C: drive. The date of the back up was four days ago. I also have a WIN11 recovery flash drive for the W11 machine but I can't it to boot to that drive. I tried to get that machine to open into the BIOS menu so that I could make sure the USB drive was in the boot path but I can't get into the BIOS menu. Several references to Dell machines refer to F2/F12 but I can't get that to work. I have used Acronis True Image to back up these machines to my NAS. The files I need to restore may all be right there that would not require a full back up. At this point, it might be wise to consult with Acronis to consider the most prudent way to attack this. I am still puzzled as to why I can not get the machine to boot into the BIOS menu.

I will post back with and progress. I do appreciate your inputs.

RoHe · Answer

You don't want/need to change the boot path in BIOS setup.

Plug your bootable USB into the PC with power fully off. Then power on and tap F12 when you see the Dell screen. Select the option to boot from USB.

See if it boots now...

merkelck · Answer

Yes , I tried that and it did not work either. At this point I have already downloaded a fresh install and run it. Now I am in the process of reinstalling a recent back up to get rid of all the detritus than comes with a fresh install. Fortunately I had a backup from three days ago on my NAS. The recovery of two drives will take some time.

Back up are a good thing...

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XPS 8950, no boot after entering the PIN

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