Dell Inspiron shutdowns and failed sleep awakenings

How strange. Went for years and years and years with a Windows 7 OS and never a single problem. Whereas from March this year, after investing in a newly refurbished Dell Inspiron, one problem after another. As it took the best part of half an entire day to get the PC to function fresh out of the box, because nothing in that first start-up process made any sense, I attributed the dismal showing to a failure on Dell's part to properly install Windows 11 on what was probably a pre-existing Windows 10 PC.

I loathed the paranoia / bureacracy of Windows 10/11 from the outset, and the repeated on-screen nagging from Microsoft to buy Office 365, buy Outlook, buy this that and the other and do this that and the other. My study is at the top floor of a secure private residence and I have no worries about someone breaking in and stealing the PC. No-one ever has. Nor have any of my friends and neighbours at any time ever experienced the theft, from their home, of their PC. Accordingly, I've never created or used a log-in password in the 30 years of PC use.

The Windows 10 or 11 system on my new Dell seemed designed to intentionally block user/owner choice and make it as difficult as possible to operate the PC without a startup or log in password. Microsoft itself didn't seem especially happy either when I went through all the long laborious steps of ridding us of our family's Outlook email account and Windows Live (?) ID.

For a few months, then, the PC has been starting up quickly without a password and running smoothly. Yet now at any time of day or night the screen turns blank and the Dell suddenly shuts down. No advance warning. No apparent cause. It's done this three times and on each occasion I've had to wait a couple of hours before I can re-start, this after unplugging the power cable and depressing the power button for more than 20 seconds. At that point, the screen comes alive with the unfathomably unhelpful glib Windows message:

Recovery: It looks like Windows didn't load correctly. (Oh really? It looks to me like it was working perfectly well before suddenly shutting down in the middle of a routine task)

If you would like to like to restart and try again (what d'you mean, 'if I would like'? Surely Microsoft, you realise I'd much prefer to be undergoing root canal dentistry without an anaesthetic, just to occupy my time: after all, why on earth would I have the slightest interest in using a computer I've bought and paid for?) choose "Restart my PC" below (a reference to one of two option boxes on display, the re-start box and another labelled "See advanced repair options". If you don't know which option is right for you, contact someone you trust (like the local priest? Or how about our family solicitor? Or General Practitioner?)) to help with this.

Thinking that the less disturbance the better of this PC, I have just changed my user practice to putting the thing into Sleep mode at the end of a period of work. Getting it to wake up however is pure farce: the startup screen appears demanding that I input my password. Seeing as I don't have one, and that I long since configured the PC to boot up without one, I obviously cannot comply with the on-screen demand, so all I can do is crash out and then try again, at which point reappears the same ludicrous Microsoft help screen as before: Recovery: It looks like Windows didn't load correctly etc etc . . .

Does anyone know of a fix or series of fixes to all this or should I arrange for the machine to go back to Dell under warranty?

I would let Dell deal with it.