Unable to boot up laptop after hibernation

Hello,

After putting my laptop in hibernation mode by mistake (because I commonly do that) instead of turning it off as I had desired, the laptop would not boot up back. Instead, after the screen "Resuming Windows" was over, a blue screen (did not have one of those "screens of death" ever since the days of XP, but this seems to be worse...) appeared stating "HARDWARE FAILURE", and asking me to contact tech support.

I hard booted my laptop and after the loading screen, nothing came back, so I am unable to boot up my laptop normally. After a second hard reset, attempted Startup Repair, without sucess. Attempted to go through safe mode, also without sucess.

Of note:
- OS: Vista Ultimate 32bit
- Shortly after acquiring the laptop seven months ago I had disabled automatic updates (both Windows' and Dell's) so I do not have most recent updates for the OS (and possibly the drivers).
- In the past, the laptop (or, at least, the screen) would rarely totally freeze shortly (always a few minutes after logging in).

Thanks in advance for any input.

Hello Campano,

Not sure but, I guess your problem lies in the hard drive or RAM failure. Imo, if your notebook is seven months old you should contact the Dell representative to repair the broken hardware. Perhaps they would send you the part to repair it by yourself. Hope this helps.

Cheers...

Most Dell's have diagnostic software built in that you can access from the "Dell" screen when the system first starts. Try running that (Dell will have you do it when you call them anyway).

If you bought it from a local retailer, see what their policy is for fixing it under warranty.

In the day after that scare ocurred, I attempted to turn on my laptop once as usual, ignoring the advice to run startup repair, and to my relief, everything went through normally. I did put the laptop in hibernation mode and back to normal mode to see if there were any problems, which were none. I am still puzzled to why this might have occurred though.

Thanks for your input.