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dead laptop

Z

zigzag03

Senior member
an older dell latidude laptop, celeron/p4 vintage, used in the marine biz for field use, takes a regular beating. the battery is recent, and problem is same when ac adapter is used.

the power key produces some hard drive noise and a couple of leds for about 10 seconds, but then powers off. the case fan underneath does not spin up. no video comes up at all, no post screen or splash, not even the backlight. i have plugged in a monitor but makes no diff.

to me this sounds like a power supply problem, and probably not worth fixing, but i was looking for some input from all you talented people. thanks zz03
 
Sounds like some things, such as the CPU and memory need reseating. Had the same sort of experience with a laptop used in a small plane - and it normally sat on the floor. Viobration loosened the CPU and it would not boot. The fix was easy but required "surgery" in removing the keyboard to access the CPU.
 
Rocket Surgery!

Er... Brain Rockets!

Ah... Anyway, I would imagine you get error beeps for missing CPU/RAM. I would place my bet on a dead PSU. How old is the laptop? I'm sure it's well within expected MTBF. It might be time to just shred it for salvageable parts, hopefully you backed up your data? Laptop repair is so time intensive I don't think it's worth it to salvage a 4-5 year old laptop, unless you never backed up and it has extremely important data on there.
 
thank you both for your thoughts. i do not get any sounds from the machine except the for the drive spinning up briefly, but i don't think it ever beeped even if it was working. i will see if i can get to to the cpu, the memory is easy, and try reseating it all. and i will pull the drive and pop it into my external drive housing and see if it gives me back anything. there is nothing critical on it, the diag programs can simply be reinstalled, but i suppose if it is badly corrupted it might cause a problem, still i would think i would see a post screen at least. thanks again, zz03
 
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