Dell Latitude - Not Booting Properly

lakeober

Honorable
Jun 19, 2012
3
0
10,510
Hello,
I am working on a weird issue with a Dell Latitude E6430. When it is off and turned on, all of the status lights come on for about 1 second then just the power button light is on... screen is black. If I then push the power button it shuts down. If I then push the power button again, the same thing happens. If I do this for about 25-50 times, it finally will boot to Windows. If I then get Windows up and do a restart, it restarts properly. However, if I do a shutdown and then power back on, the process repeats.

I have removed the battery and held power button, removed CMOS, reseated RAM, rebooted without CD drive, HD, or battery connected... nothing has resolved the issue. It seemed to me like the BIOS was jacked. Tried to upgrade it (as it is out of date by 3 years) using the BIOS flash tool from Dell while in Windows, and also created a bootable USB with the BIOS update on it. Both failed because it restarts the laptop to do the BIOS flash and then the screen is black again. Does anyone have any ideas on how to resolve this issue? Do I need to by a new MB because I can't flash the BIOS? Thanks!