[Morgan The Grey]

Hi, fellow geeks!

Friend of mine brought his friend+laptop, a 1.5 y/o Dell Inspiron 1521 (Service Tag pulls up: AMD Sempron 2.0Ghz, 2GB DDR2 667, 160GB WD Scorpio Blue HDD, DVD+/-RW, 15.4 WXGA LCD, Vista I guess, but COA worn blank) to me, hoping I could fix it, and normally I can, but this one has me stymied.

Claim: Friend said "one day I was using the laptop, and the screen went all green, then went black, and then it wouldn't turn on again, ever."

Current status: I press the power button, and the power light comes on solid blue, (=normal/working) the optical drive light comes on solid, (not normal) and the CPU fan comes on and stays on, and the system will heat up as though the CPU is loaded pretty good. But no other activity, whatsoever, no matter what. No hard drive activity, the optical drive stays on solid.

I have tried every possible combo of tested-good RAM in each slot, (NOTE: with no RAM, the caps+scroll+num lock keys will flash several times, and no power light, and the system will shut off) I have tried removing the HDD, opti, keyboard, AC Adapter vs. battery, unplugging the internal LCD cable, using an external monitor+VGA cable, everything short of total mobo replacement, all to no avail. No change, ever.

After all that, my gut says "fried video chip or CPU," as far as I can tell, which might be more than the friend can afford.

I don't want to give up if there is a chance I'm missing something, so I wanted to see if anyone has an angle I haven't tried?

Thanks, All!

Morgan

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Hi, This might help.

Recently i worked on a friends 3 year old inspiron laptop. After tidying up xp home i switched back on the next day and had the same symptons as you ie power light on & drive light on solid.

Had no reason to try this & don't know why it worked, but it did.

Disconnect power adapter, take out battery & hold down power button for 20 to 30 seconds. Replace battery, plug in power adapter & power up.

Hope this works. If anybody knows why it worked for me let us know.

[deggitt]

Hi, This might help.

Recently i worked on a friends 3 year old inspiron laptop. After tidying up xp home i switched back on the next day and had the same symptons as you ie power light on & drive light on solid.

Had no reason to try this & don't know why it worked, but it did.

Disconnect power adapter, take out battery & hold down power button for 20 to 30 seconds. Replace battery, plug in power adapter & power up.

Hope this works. If anybody knows why it worked for me let us know.

[Morgan The Grey]

No dice, Homeslice.

Tried it over and over, holding power for longer and longer... With AC, without AC, battery, no battery...

I'll try anything else you got, too, at this point!

Morgan

[deggitt]

You have tried most. How about Bios battery. Maybe corrupted bios !!!

[deggitt]

cmos battery.... page 167

http://support.dell..../RT722A02MR.pdf

[deggitt]

to reset bios...remove main battery, remove bios/cmos battery, hold down power button for 10 secs. install cmos/bios battery & power up. Also your bios/cmos battery may be shot, a new one is fairly cheap.

Edited by deggitt, 23 May 2010 - 09:26 PM.