Inspiron 1501 will not power on - Need Help Troubleshooting

Hi, a friend of mine has a Dell Inspiron 1501 that stopped working on him one day. He asked me if I could try to fix it for him in my spare time and so I told him I would try (I'm not great with computers though).

When he gave it to me I just charged it for a few days and then powered it on, and I noticed that the light indicators would go on. I could open and close the DVD drive with the button, it had some other lights on, so I thought maybe the screen went out. I then kind of forgot about the laptop, left it for a month, came back to it again to just make sure that it needed a new screen, and so I charged it for a few days, and now it won't power on at all.

When I plug in the AC adapter, the AC adapter lights up, and the Battery indicator on the laptop lights up. Then after a few seconds the Battery indicator light starts to blink. Then when I come back a day later, the battery indicator light is not lighting up or blinking at all.

I googled Inspiron 1501 issues online and it seems that Inspiron 1501s have issues like this a lot. I don't know how to get it to power on like I did a few months ago. And on top of that, I don't know if it needs a new screen. I'm just trying to figure out what is wrong with it so I can figure out if I need to buy another identical laptop online for parts and then what parts need to be swapped out.

I'm kind of just doing this for fun, so I'm planning on getting it running and will update this thread as I receive help here to let people know what works and what doesn't. Thanks in advance!

 

I doubt it's a problem with the screen... you can try running it with an external monitor to be sure. My guess is it's a motherboard problem, and you'll have to replace the board.

 

I'm assuming it is the motherboard too, I can't get it to even turn on.