Dead Dell? Help..

So yah, less than 2 years old and my Inspiron 1705 appears to be dead. Booted it up this morning and it seemed fine. Then I noticed a blue checkboarding pattern (oh noes, video going bad?). After that it's gotten worse.

I tried booting to safe mode and checking out the video drivers. While in safety mode I tried HD Tune and it had a 2MB transfer speed for the HDD.

Rebooted and now I get little to no HDD activity. There is no POST screens appearing, and the LCD remains lit for a minute or two (loading Windows?) and then turns off.

I can't Win+U+U to shut down, nor use the power button to power down. I have to hold it and force it down.

Is this is MoBo, Video or HDD issue, and what can I do to resolve it?

 

Well, to rule out the mobo and GPU completely, I would try a Linux Live CD, say Ubuntu?

 

Unplug the power and take out the battery. After few minutes put it back and try. Once this helped me to boot an unresponsive DELL notebook.

May not help you at all, but thought its worth mentioning.

 

The lack of HDD activity would suggest that your HDD has died, you should try to take it out and try it in an enclosure with another computer, to be sure.

 

Wouldn't I see POST activity though? I never see a BIOS screen..so a bunk HDD should yield a "NO DISC FOUND" right?

 

You should see a POST/BIOS screen even if your HDD is dead. Sounding more like a dead mobo. I'm assuming the computer does get power when you press the button still?

 

Yeah. I agree with bauer418. This sounds like more than a dead or dying hard drive. About the only other thing I could suggest is hooking up an external display and see if you get anything on boot up, but that seems a long shot. Sounds like dying motherboard.

 

Unfortunately I do not have an external display. This laptop has been a lemon. I have had DVD and HDD complaints to Dell and nothing has been done. Now it looks like I am stuck with a dead notebook after less than 2 years..wow.

 

It seems like it is either your HD or you need to upgrade your drivers

 

Seems like you need to learn how to read. The LCD is lit but BLACK. I can't do anything to the system. And my screw driver is a hair too large to tear it down.

 

Some guy told me it is a memory issue. Am I mistaken in believing he is full of **** since the lcd lights up with no display, there is no posting and the hdd seems lame?

 

It *could* be a memory issue. If you have any other DDR2 memory sitting around you could give it a try. Or buy a really cheap stick of DDR2 =\...but I doubt it.

 

I just moved and left my old RAM at home since I didn't think I'd need it.

 

A chat tech is telling me to completely dis-assemble the notebook.

 

Well, it's actually possible it could be a memory issue, though I'd not bank on it. I once built a desktop system and bought the wrong RAM, and it behaved just that way...no POST at all, just sort of a power-up with no beeps, and light to the display but no actual display. Have you tried booting it it with no RAM at all? For that matter, have you tried booting it without the hard drive installed?

But having good RAM suddenly go bad for no reason after two years would be a little odd. I'd still strongly suspect a dead motherboard. But if you know someone that has a notebook with compatible RAM, it'd certainly be worth trying before relegating your system to the junk heap. Assuming that someone wants to lend you their "good" RAM to try out in your fried motherboard that is.

 

After a bunch of crap. They replaced the graphics card..and the KEYBOARD.
I am still having a clicking sound that I do not know if it is a fan or hdd..diagnostics haven't found anything.

 

They lied again

 

Sounds like you had a similar experience to my Lenovo experience.

Is the laptop still doing nothing? And did you try the battery out, power button trick?

 

They replaced the video card and keyboard (why?), but ignored my dvd drive complaint and note about strange ticking sounds.