[Woman]

Dell Inspirion 6000 laptop.

Had been working online and in Word for a couple hours. Clicked on "home" on Facebook--and my screen went black.

Held down the start button to shut down. Started up, got to the Windows XP welcome screen, and it went black. Did this several times.

Removed battery (which has been dead for years) and power cable. Waited half a minute, plugged in the power cable, and started up. After the welcome screen, it went black.

With battery still removed, I removed the power cable, flipped the laptop over, removed and replaced one RAM, then the other. Held power button down one minute. Replaced power cord and started. The sound was very low and it died within a couple seconds. Tried starting it up several times. Each time, the sound wasn't the usual louder sound of boot up, but a very quiet sound, then it died within seconds.

Help!

Thanks.

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do you have your xp cd

have you tried safe mode

have you tried last known good configuration

[rockmilk]

do you have your xp cd

have you tried safe mode

have you tried last known good configuration

[The Skeptic]

My impression is that there are two problems. The first one is a damaged XP (the black screen) and the second one is hardware related and occurred while you tried to fix the first one. You must resolve the second one first and get yourself to the point where XP starts booting.

Please double check that the RAM modules sit correctly in place. Take them out, clean the contacts and replace them. I am not sure, but the faint sound that you hear could be an alarm given by the computer when a hardware item is damaged or not recognized.

[Woman]

Trusted Tech:

Thank you! It was indeed the RAM which I'd failed to replace properly. Now if I can only figure out why the screen is going pinkish...

[Woman]

Hey Rockmilk.

Problem was, the computer wouldn't turn on, so I couldn't open the drive to insert the XP disc, but thanks for the reply.