Help with laptop resuscitation?

[jedusor]

The entry Mike just posted, c&p'd in the hopes that someone on my flist might be able to help out:


Posting this from Julia's computer.

So yesterday afternoon the screen of my laptop (Inspiron 1721) suddenly went black. No odd noises, no minor glitches leading up to it. It just suddenly blinked out. I powered off and back on, and it won't start. I've turned it on and off several times, waiting for various intervals in between. The power light's on, and there's... the usual sounds it makes when it starts, for the most part, but the hard drive light stays off and the screen stays black - except for one random time when the Dell startup screen came and went as usual before the screen went back to black.

It's been randomly BSoDing maybe once or twice a week for as long as I can remember (at least as far back as January), but I'd been writing that off as just a thing PCs did.

Things Google has led me to believe I should try: Battery's relatively healthy and fully charged, if the gauge lights are any indication. AC adapter looks good. Reseating the memory hasn't had an effect. Pressing Fn as I turn it on is supposed to launch diagnostics - it causes Caps and Num Lock lights to blink and Scroll Lock to shine steadily, but I can't find anywhere that lists what, if anything, that might mean.

Does anyone have any advice?

Comments

[elgecko.livejournal.com]

Dell laptops are somewhat notorious for badly connected ribbon cables and cheap ribbon cable connectors. If you're feeling brave, look for panels "above" the keyboard that you can take out, and get to some screws. Take the thing apart until you see the set of cables that comes from the display and connect to the base. There are typically two or three depending on how it's made. What you're looking for is the thickest / widest one. I'm gonna bet that it has worked itself loose from the motherboard and needs to be reseated.

If you're *not* feeling brave, take it to a local repair shop. It should be a cheap and quick labour cost to get it done.

[projectyl.livejournal.com]

If these (http://www.insidemylaptop.com/images/Dell-Inspiron-1720-Vostro-1700/disassemble-laptop-13.jpg) what you meant, it looks like it's no such luck. Both were seated so firmly neither Julia nor I could get them out by hand. (We were considering disassembling it further to look for anything else that might have shook loose, but we were reluctant to take pliers to those two connectors.)

[canadianpuzzler.livejournal.com]

If it's the LCD screen that went, you should be able to let it boot (possibly up to and including logging in), then use the function keys to switch from the LCD to the monitor port. provided you have a monitor connected, you will then be able to do whatever is necessary to back up your files and/or do what is necessary to be done.

[gerald_duck]

Conjecture: the screen and hard drive might be the two devices that use the 5V rail from the laptop's power supply (everything else being 3.3V or lower, these days). A dead giveaway would be if the screen was actually still functioning and it was only the backlight that was dead (though this is very hard to spot unless you dismantle the laptop and shine a torch through it).

Either that or the BIOS notices the dead screen and goes no further. As a wild stab in the dark, maybe plugging in an external monitor would reveal something interesting?

Beyond that, I guess I'd dismantle it, poke around for voltages on any useful-looking power lines, re-seat everything that moves and hope for the best.

Unfortunately, I've got very little Dell-specific expertise, precisely because their extended warranties are so good. I've had a UK employee buy a Dell laptop in the USA and have it break in Munich before now: it only took one phone call to have a guy turn up the following day to replace the mainboard at his hotel's reception desk (he left the laptop there). If I ever buy a Dell, I'm taking the warranty. /-8

[pyrodice1.livejournal.com]

I'm feeling power fluctuations on this. Explains the BSoD, where a monitor problem wouldn't, and explains the monitor problem where a hard drive failure wouldn't. I like the 5v rail idea, except I'm not sure how feasible that is on a laptop. That would be a motherboard issue on my laptop. My personal experimentation would involve pulling the Hard Drive, and installing it elsewhere to see if THAT works. If it's still dead, and followed the HD, you've got some nuclear software issues. Your computer caught AIDS.
also, btw... I tried to contact you once earlier. I was so sorry to hear about Abby... I knew AndroidLovesong since she was 10. I've never found another person whose loss felt like it left the world THAT much lesser a place, afterwards. :(