Impact, then black screen?

I have a Studio XPS 16, with a 2.4GHz C2D and the Radeon 3670. I've had this laptop since I got it on eBay about a year and a half ago. It's been a great computer up until today. I was using my computer on my lap while I was sitting at my desk. I went to hand my mom an empty bowl (but fairly heavy for a bowl nonetheless) from my desk and accidentally dropped it onto the keyboard of the laptop. The screen then froze, so I held the power button to shut it down as I had to go to work. When I got home this evening, it wouldn't start up. When you press the power button, The keyboard and other lights light up, and the disc in the DVD drive and the HDD spin up, but nothing shows up on the screen. I don't believe it boots at all, because if I leave it for a minute or so, then press the power button, it shuts right off, even though it should be booting into Windows. Anyone have any ideas as to what the problem could be? Any help is appreciated as I really don't want to have to replace it right now. I want it to at least last me 6 more months.
Thanks in Advance!

 

I guess there might be two reasons (which I can think of as of now)...
first is a hard disk failure...you should listen for some clicks when your hard disk starts spinning (its a sign of hard disk failure)...
second reason may be a broken connection to the screen due to the impact of the bowl...
so just try to rule out the second possible reason by connecting the laptop to another monitor to see if it is booting....

it might be one of the other above reasons or both or a combination of other reasons too...let us know what happened..

Good Luck...

 

Those were the two things I suspected as well, so I hooked up a VGA monitor and the monitor stayed asleep. I dont think it could be the hard drive as it would at least show the boot screen with the Dell logo if that were the case, right? Plus, I unplugged the hard drive to see if that would make a difference and it didn't

 

Correct

most likely you have issues with the motherboard

you can try remving CD ROM, Wireless card, hard Drive, and re-seat the memory and try booting.

try one dimm at a time, in each memlry slot.

Failing that, you can try checking the CPU and GPU. and take a close look at the motherboard for any visual damage

 

Well, I disassembled the computer and reassembled it to no avail. I also tried each DIMM in each slot one at a time, also to no avail. Hopefully the replacement mainboard fixes the problem.

Thanks for your help!

 

So, I got a mainboard on eBay for $40, but it was listed as 'untested' with a warranty. I took the plunge and it arrived today! I installed it and am now typing on my newly revived laptop! Thanks for your help!

 

Good to hear you got the problem solved! Thanks for following up with the solution.