Dell Laptop Keeps Restarting

Is your Dell laptop restarting consistently? Is it getting the Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) when it restarts? This page will go over several common software or hardware related occurrences, so read on to determine the right solution for you!

This may seem trivial but a restart of your computer is the first thing you should try. This tends to fix some innocuous issues.

• Press and hold the power button for 15 seconds to force restart it.

If your computer is getting a "Blue Screen of Death" (BSOD) when it's restarting, check out the Dell Laptop Blue Screen page for more BSOD focused tips.

There is a “boot loop” bug present in some Windows 10 versions.

1. Hold the FN key (Function key) and power on the laptop.
2. While holding the FN key, press the Windows key repeatedly.
3. The Windows logon screen will appear. Login as normal.

Newer versions of Windows have a feature that will automatically restart the computer if it’s running into issues. Since you are not able to get into Windows to change this setting, you will need to boot into Safe Mode.

1. To boot into Safe Mode, hold the power button for 10 seconds to power off the laptop.
2. Press the power button to start the laptop.
3. Do this 2 more times to get Windows to boot into a recovery environment. It’s the manual process of powering off the laptop and interrupting the process that forces it to boot into a recovery environment.
4. You will see Choose an option at the top of the page. Navigate using the arrow keys to Troubleshoot > Advanced options > Startup Settings > Restart.
5. Windows will restart and show a menu of options. Choose Safe Mode with Networking.
6. Log in with your password when prompted.
7. Search for Control Panel from the Start Menu. If it does not come up, press the Windows key + R, type in control, and hit Enter.

1. System and Security > System > Advanced system settings (within Device specifications)

1. Click on Settings under the Startup and Recovery section

1. Uncheck the Automatically restart checkbox and click OK. Close all other windows you opened along the way.

The Fast Startup feature allows Windows to start, well, faster—but there are some issues when it comes to this. A Fast Startup has the computer hibernate various programs and files for the computer to startup faster when you restart the computer. This is a great feature to reduce time but it also can introduce unwanted issues because of the hibernation aspect. We can disable this feature from the control panel.

1. Search for Control Panel from the Start Menu. If it does not come up, press the Windows key + R, type in control, and hit Enter.
2. Power Options (search in the bar at the top right) > Choose what the power button does (on the left-hand side) > Change settings that are currently unavailable
3. Uncheck the Turn on fast startup (recommended) checkbox. Click on Save changes and close Control Panel.

A corrupt OS means that there are files critical to the operating system that has become invalid or messed up in some way (the computer was powered off during an update, the computer died while sleeping, etc). This leads to weird glitches throughout the computer. Windows provides access to repair tools that correct these corruption issues.

1. Right-click on the Start Menu and select Command Prompt, Powershell, or Windows Terminal (Windows 8, 10, and 11 will provide different options).
2. Type sfc /scannow and hit Enter.
3. Wait for the command to finish. If there were corrupt files to repair, it will repair them.

Check for viruses. Some forms of malware affect the ability to use the computer.

• Scan your computer with Malwarebytes or ESET Online Scan. These are free programs that provide some good malware scanning techniques.

Reinstall Windows. A full Windows reinstall may be necessary to restore the laptop’s normal function as malware infections aren’t always fully cleaned out post-quarantine.

1. Use a known good and “clean” computer to download the Windows operating system to create a bootable flash drive.
2. Back up any files, bookmarks, pictures, etc. you wish to keep onto a cloud platform like Google Drive or Dropbox after you have run antivirus scans. This can lessen the transfer of existing malware onto your fresh install of Windows compared to plugging in a flash drive and infecting multiple computers.
3. Boot from the Windows bootable flash drive. Erase all partitions in the setup wizard and install the fresh OS to your drive.
4. Transfer the data back onto your laptop.

Your laptop’s battery might be on its way out and is not providing any or much power to the laptop. In this case, the charger is doing the heavy lifting. Your charger supplies power to the laptop but disconnects—or the charger cable is damaged and was jostled, disconnecting it. The laptop powers off because of power supply disconnecting and back on when it gets power again.

• It’s time to replace the battery. Check out the iFixit Dell Laptop battery selection for your exact model and follow along with a guide.

The RAM in your laptop may be faulty causing the laptop to crash. Test the memory first before swapping it out.

1. Run Windows Memory Diagnostic from the Start Menu.
2. Choose Restart now and check for problems (recommended). Make sure to save anything you were working on as this automatically restarts the computer.
3. The computer will restart and run the test. Keep an eye out for the results as this lets you know if your RAM is faulty.
4. Replace the memory — either increasing the overall size or keeping the same amount and speed.

• How to restore the BIOS or UEFI (system setup) to factory defaults on a Dell computer

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