Powered down PC last night, this morning will not start.
When I try to power up the Dell welcome screen is shown for a few seconds which is normal, then all I see is a flashing cursor in left top corner of screen. This is a stoping point with startup. I also find something odd, when I hold in power button to power back down and release button the PC tries to restart on its own. The same problem occurs each time.

Also I tried starting in Safe Mode and I get a message: Keyboard Failure

I tried starting without the keyboard pluged in and Keyboard Failure message returns, This is also the stoping point with startup.
Thanks for Help.

You will need to look into this a bit more, but not so long ago a colleague had a similar problem on an old Dell notebook. Google 'white cursor of death'. Initially I thought it was the Hard-drive as there was a clicking sound coming from it, but it turned out that this was just a symptom of the WCOD. The way I solved it was to flash the BIOS, but when I was researching the issue there were a few other suggestions of fixes although most of the fixes were pretty convoluted and seemed to involve shifting data/partitions about :S

Will replacing the keyboard help the issue?

Thanks

I wouldnt go so far as to buy a new keyboard, but trying a different (known working) keyboard will help towards pinpointing the source of the problem.

Hi Jasonstuckey,

Are you still having a problem with this PC starting? I'd suggest trying to get into the BIOS (a.k.a. CMOS or Setup). This is normally done by pressing F2 or [Delete] as soon as the PC is switched on (although it might be a different key on your Dell). The point of getting into the BIOS is that there is often an option to report keyboard errors - try switching this on or off (whichever option is not currently using) and then see if the PC starts up any differently.

You might find that it then loads up as far as the login screen or the desktop and you can then open a text editor such as Notepad in order to test whether all of the keys are working.

The other point of doing that is that, if pressing the appropriate key on the keyboard doesn't get you into the BIOS screens, then you know the keyboard is probably broken!