m1330 power cycles in one second

Hi everyone!

I have a Dell m1330 XPS laptop that was working fine until recently when it just went completely dead. After reading about it on the net I started replacing things in my system. I started out with replacing the power jack on the motherboard, then the battery charger / USB board, and now the entire motherboard. None of these things have made any difference.

The symptom I am seeing now is that when I push the power button the power LED lights up, and then after a second or so the system turns off. During this time the hard drive spins up but the CPU fan doesn't. The screen does not show anything.

The problem occurs when I am using the power adapter (with or without the battery) or when running just on battery.

I have tried different battery, different power adapters, different RAM as well. I also have tried to boot up just the board without anything connected to it (keyboard, DVD, screen, etc.).

The only thing I haven't tried is a different CPU. I don't have an extra one of those to try.

So before I spend some more money on this laptop, I thought I'd ask here in case someone has any suggestions for me.

I appreciate your reply.

 

If it does with with just the CPU in the motherboard and everything else out, then well.

 

Someone was telling me that maybe my heatsink/fan wasn't secure enough. Do you think that this problem would occur if the heatsink fan was dead? I don't know if the MB is smart enough to figure that out prior to POST or not.

Thanks!

 

The motherboard is not smart enough to know whether there is a heatsink installed or not. If you have replaced everything but the CPU, then it seems that that is the issue (though it is very, very rare that CPUs themselves die). Otherwise, your replacement motherboard is conceivably a dud, which I would personally think more likely.

 

For all we know you're shocking it with static electricity.

 

Alright - thanks for the info. I'll go down the CPU route and see what happens. I have also replaced the MB's and it was the same problem with the previous one. This laptop is somewhat old so I am trying to not do too much with it... but I do like it very much and so there's the confusion. The original problem started with where my laptop just died completely. No power, no LEDs, not even charging the battery. That's where I started replacing things one by one - first the power jack, then the battery charger / USB board, and now the entire motherboard. I guess CPU is next but only if I can find it at a reasonable price. We'll see.

Lucanesti - the static electricity is always something to worry about and I get it. I would like to think I am careful enough and not shocking it every time I am working with the laptop.

Thanks again!