Inspiron 1520 won't boot at all...Help please!

So I know this isn't much for everyone to go on but I just uploaded this video of my problem, you should be able to stream it, if anyone has any problems then let me know. And sorry for the quality, I only have a camera phone to hand, you should be able to see what happens anyway...hopefully

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3dvfv8mT0E

Basically what happens is, I press the power on button of my machine, everything appears to be normal, the power LED turns on, the Hard drive activity LED flickers on and the DVD drive "clicks" (im sure some Dell owners know what I mean by this) BUT then all the lights go out (besides the power) and nothing is shown on my screen, no BIOS loading, nothing.

Does anyone know what might cause this?

I tried yesterday to get it to work but after about 7 hours I just gave up, nothing I did changed anything (I thought the CPU/GPU may of come unattached from the motherboard but after reseating them the problem was still there)

Any help would be really, really appreciated (from both me and my wallet!)
Thanks

 

demon - The first thing I would do is connect the video out on your Dell to an external LCD. If the video out works then you know your graphics card is OK. If the GPU is OK then you have to consider either the inverter (less likely) or the LCD itself. I have systems from two friends sitting at my place now - both need new LCD's - one Toshiba and one H-P. The H-P is a dv6000 which is probably about as old as your 1520. Inverters are cheap on fleabay - I paid around $10 for the last one I ordered - LCD's seem to be running $90 to $100. Good luck with your Dell...

 

This will hurt your wallet, I think that the 8600M is faulty.

Did you have any video problems lately?

And yes, JellyGeo is right about checking it first with an external monitor.

 

I had a similar problem with my 1720 a few times, but it happens rarely. IMO I believe the GPU is ok.

Have you tried reseating the RAM sticks?

Also, try this:

1. Remove the AC and battery.

2. Hold down the power button for 1 minute. This is to discharge all static left in the motherboard. I'm suspecting this could be the main cause.

3. Re attach back the AC and battery and try booting up.

This is what I did when my 1720 does the same thing and it works on the next boot. The problem went away soon after. Do update us on the issue.

 

Oooh - SomeFormOFhuman mentioned some more trouble-shooting 101 that I didn't think of at the moment I replied. But - I have an excuse - I'm old!!

 

Thanks for your input so far everyone.

So I tried to connect my notebook to an external monitor a short while ago, plugged it all in and powered the machine up...nothing Still no BIOS loading displayed or anything. The hard drive activity light does not flicker on and off, which is leading me to assume that somewhere down the line, something to do with the hard drive isn't working correctly.

When you say video problems what do you mean? For the past 3 or 4 months i've been having an odd problem where I would move my notebook, it would then freeze, if that counts? Sometimes when it froze it would make this really high pitched "squeel" at the same time.

I tried reseating the RAM and your other suggestion but neither made any difference, thanks very much though.

Do we think it's a lost cause?

 

Ok so this morning I had a brain wave to connect my laptop hard drive up to my desktop computer to see if it would work, so I attached the SATA cable and power lead to the laptop drive and powered on my desktop...IT WORKED!...well kind of, my desktop's BIOS screen showed up and then it changed to Windows 7's startup repair/start normally screen, so I choose startup repair, i figure Windows might be able to fix whatever might be wrong, it runs through it's tests and tells me that I need to run a System Restore, i go ahead and restore it to a date when everything seemed to work fine (I took it right back to the 18th, to be safe) but just as it's reaching the end an error message somes up

"An unspecified error occured during System Restore: 0x8000ffff"

So I click close and my desktop shuts down. I turn it back on and instead of going into Windows Startup repair I choose the option to "Start Normally" but when I do this the computer just goes in a loop of restarting and bringing me back to the choices.

So um...any ideas?
Is my laptop drive broken? I wish I had another 2.5" drive to try in my laptop. Im starting to think it's either my laptop hard drive or maybe a motherboard issue?

 

The Windows installation is tied to the computer it was installed on (the laptop) so as soon as it's thrown back in the laptop, everything would boot fine (no looping). I'm not sure of the official term for this, or if you can retrieve the files, hopefully someone more educated on the matter can post. Sound's like your video card is faulty.

You can read more about the failures of the card in this thread:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=296979


Good luck!

 

It's probably going into startup repair because the laptop kept shutting down during boot.

 

I believe it's something Dell does with the windows installation... I tried putting a dell windows installed hard drive in a different computer and couldn't get it past the "start windows normally" screen, as it kept looping, and startup repair did nothing. As soon as it was put back in the dell machine, it booted perfectly fine.

 

You should be able to get into the BIOS without a HDD installed.

 

Hmmm, the installation files being stored on the notebook would make sense, but if that were the case would that mean that I have an issue with the motherboard on my notebook? Seeing as I get power but no Hard drive activity or anything on screen? (Remember when I put the laptop hard drive into my desktop, it started AND things were displayed on screen, I just couldn't boot because I didn't have the corrent files)

How would I go about doing this? I tried to start my notebook when the drive was in my desktop but nothing happened, well, nothing besides whats been happening everytime i've started it (power but nothing on the screen, the hard drive activity light wouldn't flicker because there isn't one inserted)

 

It's not necessarily any files are on the Laptop itself, but that the Windows installation on the hard drive is 'locked' or 'tied' to the laptop. As I mentioned in another post, I took a dell windows installed hard drive out of a Dell computer, trying to get it to boot in another computer, but it continued to loop. As soon as it was put back in the Dell, it worked perfectly fine.

As you mentioned, you tried to boot without the hard drive and nothing was displayed on the screen. It definitely sounds like it's pointing to the video card, and with known failures of this model (you were already experiencing system crashes) this is the most likely suspect.

Good luck with your situation, hopefully you can get it resolved for relatively cheap!

 

I really hope it's not the video card! I would imagine it's stupidly expensive to get it replaced :/

If I took the card out of my laptop and then tried to boot it, would it turn on? Or doesn't the motherboard have any integrated chip?

Im trying to think of a way that I can get a backup of my hard drive more than anything now

 

Sad to hear that this is happening on your laptop. I would get a 2.5" harddrive enclosure, they're generally bundled with the USB 2.0 wire and a connector to connect the head of the harddrive. Assemble them and so in that way you can plug into another computer like an external harddrive to backup all your stuff over.

As for your motherboard, is your 1520 under warranty? Just get hold of Dell for a replacement mobo. I think that's all I can think of currently I would do if I were you.

 

hey Thanks
If I were to get a SATA enclosure and pop it in, would another computer be able to read the hard drive even though it has Windows 7 installed onto it? (It's a primary dirve rather than an externally formatted drive...does that make sense? Sorry). I'll try and find a cheap enclosure online.

As for my laptop, it's not under warranty, it's just come to the end of it's 2 years, suddenly paying £160 for another years warranty doesn't look too bad! haha. I think i might just save myself the hassle and look for a new laptop entirely, i've not been able to use my laptop, as a laptop, for a few months with all the problems i've been having so it'd be nice to go back to having a bit of mobility

Thanks a lot

EDIT: Would anyone be able to recommend a good but *cheap* enclosure? I'll check out the usual places like Novatech and Scan.co.uk but was just wondering if anyone had any "hands on" with any of them

 

I just thought i'd give a small update, I got my external enclosure this morning and *touch wood* so far it seems to be working fine, the drive doesnt boot but im able to use Windows Explorer to pull off data from the drive to backup So thats a small victory.

My Inspiron still doesn't boot, but I guess I can discount the hard drive from being the faulty component, I don't think it's the RAM either so that leaves me with the motherboard or graphics card...the 2 most expensive components haha, figures. Ah well, once I can find a laptop that catches my eye, i'll just bin it and start over-+

EDIT: Just a quick question, once i've sorted my way through the minefield that is backing up, could I reformat the drive or would that totally mess something up Dell's end?

 

Ah, good to hear. Didn't realised you had replied. Yes, not to worry, it will not boot thru' the external HDD, it will be seen as a secondary drive instead with all the files, Windows folders all intact.

You could reformat the drive if you want to, but it will remove all backups and original factory settings from it. I don't really care about those though, I just format the damn thing (they take up unnecessary space especially mediadirect, personally) entirely, changed to a faster HDD and did a fresh installation of Windows 7.

Generally if the graphics card is faulty, Windows will still function as per normal and will still boot to windows. But you'll only hear sounds (eg. bootup sound), and you will not see anything on screen or probably witness a fuzzy, artitecting display instead with vertical green and pink lines everywhere.

 

Heya, sorry for taking so long to get back to you

You say if the graphics card is faulty then Windows should still boot and i'd just get sounds, but I don't get anything at all on screen, would this narrow down my problem to maybe something to do with the motherboard then?

I suppose I can go around and around like this until im blue in the face, it won't bring my Inspiron back to life anytime soon
Using this desktop is doing my nut in slowly, i'd forgotten how loud they can be!

Later tonight im going to make sure I have everything I want from my 1520's hard drive backed up, and then im going to format it. I use my own copy of Windows 7 anyway so any settings or partitions on the drive are a bit useless anyway (now)

Thanks for your help btw, I would never of thought to put the drive into an enclosure