larrytucaz
Senior member
MODERATOR: CAN YOU DELETE THIS? I'm now getting hits on the original post, and I don't see in here an option to delete this post. Feel free to delete this.
I posted this in "general" but am getting no replies, maybe I posted in the wrong forum? (Moderator: if I need to delete one of the posts, no problem.)
I have an Inspiron 8600 that tries to boot but won't. The LCD will "flicker" briefly & the 3 lights (Scroll Lock-Caps Lock-Num Lock) glow for a bit as normal but then only the Caps Lock (in the middle) remains, flickering--then it shuts down.
I have noticed that the CPU (?) fan (near the rear where you plug it in, it's easily removable via 2 screws) isn't firing up during this sequence. Somewhere along the line the machine gave me the option to continue working despite the presence of a non-working fan (press F1 to resume F2 to access BIOS) but I shut down within Windows XP barely a minute later. It shut down normally with no problem and I left it alone for awhile to make sure it was cool.
The next time I tried, it started exhibiting this behavior.
Again, it does TRY to fire up, but then shuts down--with the "glowing" lights becoming "flickering" lights (2 of the 3 stop altogether, the last one--caps lock--goes from "glow" to "flicker.")
One person did mention the possibility of bad memory chips, I will say that, before this problem, I did have a "physical memory dump" problem which was solved by me simply swapping the location of the 2 DIMM memory chips (moving the chip in slot 1 to slot 2, and vice versa).
Is it possible that merely swapping this fan out for another one (I got one on eBay for $5) would solve this, or is it likely to be something more significant--or something else simple I'm missing?
I posted this in "general" but am getting no replies, maybe I posted in the wrong forum? (Moderator: if I need to delete one of the posts, no problem.)
I have an Inspiron 8600 that tries to boot but won't. The LCD will "flicker" briefly & the 3 lights (Scroll Lock-Caps Lock-Num Lock) glow for a bit as normal but then only the Caps Lock (in the middle) remains, flickering--then it shuts down.
I have noticed that the CPU (?) fan (near the rear where you plug it in, it's easily removable via 2 screws) isn't firing up during this sequence. Somewhere along the line the machine gave me the option to continue working despite the presence of a non-working fan (press F1 to resume F2 to access BIOS) but I shut down within Windows XP barely a minute later. It shut down normally with no problem and I left it alone for awhile to make sure it was cool.
The next time I tried, it started exhibiting this behavior.
Again, it does TRY to fire up, but then shuts down--with the "glowing" lights becoming "flickering" lights (2 of the 3 stop altogether, the last one--caps lock--goes from "glow" to "flicker.")
One person did mention the possibility of bad memory chips, I will say that, before this problem, I did have a "physical memory dump" problem which was solved by me simply swapping the location of the 2 DIMM memory chips (moving the chip in slot 1 to slot 2, and vice versa).
Is it possible that merely swapping this fan out for another one (I got one on eBay for $5) would solve this, or is it likely to be something more significant--or something else simple I'm missing?
Last edited:
