Inspiron 2100 POST but no boot

[mryellow2]

Friend had me take a look at her broken laptop but I'm stumped. It'll POST and then hang with a blinking cursor in the upper left hand corner.
The BIOS won't allow me to change the boot order as an Admin or User. Tried taking out the hard drive and booting with just a floppy but that didn't work either. I've broken the whole thing down and nothing looks burned or broken.
She says she may have dropped it a short distance (about a foot) before it broke. Hard drive is functional and I was able to move the data on it to another drive. Ram seems to work fine.
Any help would be appreciated, thanks!

 

[Aleksandar]

If you can open the laptop up find the battery ftom the bios remove it for 10 min return it if it works then flash the bios on the laptop i cant see that anything else can go wrong maby the ram is bad test it on a nother laptop if you can

 

[LiLithTecH]

It could also be the CPU needs to be reseated.
If it was jarred hard enough, there is a good chance that is the case.

Care needs to be taken when removing the Thermal-Cooling assembly,
and do not over-tighten the Processor Cam Screw upon re-assembly.

 

[mryellow2]

I'll try both if I can find the time to take all bajillion screws out today.

 

[mryellow2]

CPU is soldered into the motherboard =D so er, no need for reseating there. Unhooked the only battery I could find and let it sit for a few minutes. Spent another 10 minutes screwing everything back together. BIOS was reset but it still hangs after posting.

Thanks for trying guys. I think I'm going to throw in the towel on this one. Had it for a couple weeks already. Laptops are just too much trouble. Going to tell her to order a new motherboard or call up Dell.

 

[BT7990]

Go to the Dell website and download the Dell 32 Bit Diagnostics. It will create a set of boot disks, then run it. This will identify any hardware issues. I would not take it apart until you know what the issue is.

 

[mryellow2]

Unfortunately the laptop won't boot from floppy, cd, hdd....anything. Perhaps it's one of the ide controllers. In any case I give up.

 

[huesmann]

Can you boot from LAN?