Windows 10 desktop won't restart

[Donald Harris]

I upgraded this Dell 5303 desktop from Win 7 to Win 10 about 2 months ago and have been pleased with the results. When I entered my home office this morning the computer apparently tried to restart overnight (I did not do it) and is stuck on the first screen, I tried F12 and nothing happened, I kept trying to manually restart it and it still stops on the first screen, F12 or F2 does nothing and I do not get any error codes!

 

[Trouble]

Hard reset it and see what happens.
Remove the AC power from the wall.
Press and hold the power button for a count of 30 a few sips of a beverage of your choosing.
Plug it back in and turn it on.
IF it turns on and runs, then investigate your advanced power plan options. Sounds like it's getting stuck in some power saving state or other and set the power button to "Shut Down" not sleep.

 

[Donald Harris]

Hard reset it and see what happens.
Remove the AC power from the wall.
Press and hold the power button for a count of 30 a few sips of a beverage of your choosing.
Plug it back in and turn it on.
IF it turns on and runs, then investigate your advanced power plan options. Sounds like it's getting stuck in some power saving state or other and set the power button to "Shut Down" not sleep.

That sort of solved the problem, but in a round-a-bout way! What you wrote did not solve the problem, but while is was staring at the desktop in frustration I disconnected my USB WD external backup hard drive, restarted it and it started right up. I swapped the WD external backup hard drive from my other Dell computer to it and lo and behold it stopped on the same screen. I checked the settings in the Boot sequence section and the Hard Drive is first on the list and there is no option for USB drive for startup. So, now I can't do automatic backups on that computer.

Story of my life, if I can find a solution why my USB drives prevent the computer from restarting, then something that never happened to anyone else is sure to happen to me, and my name is not legally "Murphy"!