The main purpose of this post:
To get an answer to how can you update your drivers or do any sort of settings fixes when you cannot even get the computer to start up because it's stuck in what seems like sleep mode?
Soon after getting automatically updated to Windows 8.1, my Inspiron R17 5720 started getting stuck in sleep mode.
After researching and going through the online Dell support diagnostics, it detected that I needed a slew of driver updates (about 14), most of which were updates for Window 8.1 compatibility for chipset, video/graphics card, bios. Same process everyone's experienced.
I downloaded all the updates and perhaps I should have clicked the button that has Dell initiate the update process in the recommended order.
The reason I did not do it is because most updates required a reboot after installation. I had work I needed to do and didn't want to get stuck, unable to reboot after the first restart. I figured i'd work first then do the updates later.
I shut down before I could begin any of the updates and I've been stuck on stupid/sleep mode ever since.
Symptoms
problem started wen I tried to shut down and the computer would not completely shut down...it got stuck in sleep mode. So I held down the Power button until it shut off.
Days or a week later, I started to experience trouble booting up because it would get stuck in sleep mode - all lights flash on, then the hard drive light turns off, power and battery light stay on, screen stays black/blank the entire time. This happened sporadically and I could overcome it by simply powering off a few times and rebooting.
Now, it will not boot up at all. It always reverts to sleep mode.
I've read about creating a boot-up USB flash drive, but my bios settings are not set to read off the USB drive on boot-up. So I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place.
I've read all the solutions and I suspect all I need to do is update my drivers, But, how can I install the driver updates/fixes if I cannot even get out of sleep mode and into Windows OS?