Inspiron 1526 black screen - boot failure

I think you may have multiple failures causing these symptoms because that's what it sounds like. Do you have a way to check your hard drive? It might be failing or have already failed and that's what could have caused your first black screen errors.

You need to check your battery and more importantly, your power supply. If they are ok, then the last thing to check regarding your power on for 5 seconds issue is the ac jack on the computer itself. kkennison has pics a few posts above.

How did you run a diagnostic? What tool did you use?

 

Micman,

I run a diagnostics by pressing Fn & Power. I went back and reinstalled the refurbished motherboard with some other peripherals and everything has been working well...no issues so far. I have also updated to the latest BIOS software out of Dell.

A few points that might be useful to other users:

1. The fan has been running a lot more frequently now...probably explains as to why is not as hot underneath as it used to be.

2. I have read that a lot of Dell laptops using Nvidia GPU sold b/w 2007-2010 have been experiencing issues with black screens and video failures. Some people suggested as to remove the heat sink from the GPU when the unit is off, turn it on for 10 mins and see what happens

 

If at first you don't succeed, try try again. It worked for you

 

Thanks for the great tuturial my dell had the black screen and would only come on if I removed the battery and cord and held the power button for like five or ten sec but dont rember any lights flashing either way great guide fixed my problem I also removed the heat sink and cleaned fins and fan then cleaned and reapplied thermal compound cmos battery only had .02 volts should of been 3.00 or close. Project took 3 mabey 4 hours fired it up came on first try!

 

Awesome write up! Just finished replacing the battery in an Inspiron 1526 and it boot right up! I do wonder though.. Is it the battery that's bad.. or is it taking out the battery so that the motherboard 'clears' that fixes the issue? Oh well, it works!

 

Hi -

Thanks for your tutorial. It helped me with things the Dell procedure jumped over and in the end I needed both to get the job done.

It took me a while, but I disassembled my 1526, replaced the "coin cell" battery and reassembled the laptop (but not without backing up a few times). Now it behaves as before except it never boots. I am still trying as I write this on an older Dell laptop purchased in 2003 and running XP. Any idea where to go from here? The coin cell CR2032 was dead as a door nail. I am thinking of making a bootable DVD with my XP laptop.

Thanks again, and please make suggestions.

Jim

 

What happens when you press the power button?

 

The power light comes on, the screen faintly flickers one time. The fan comes on for a few seconds then goes quiet. When I press FUNC+on, the numeric keypad light blinks off and on quickly and the other two keypad status light stay on.

 

Tried many times to get the screen back by recycling the power but no luck so far. Disassembled and re-assembled the lap top again yesterday. Anyone feel free to chime in please. Thanks.

 

I think I just had a breakthrough in this. I had a friend, who is an aspiring computer tech that just went into business for himself, change the CMOS battery and it didn't work. I figured I had to buy another laptop.

I left the laptop alone for about two weeks, but recently needed to get a file off of it. I hit the start button and same thing: lights came on and the whole thing went off right before I got to the Dell screen.

I set it aside on a table and worked on another computer. After about 10 minutes, I could hear the fan turn and the hard drive start to move. I turned the whole computer down and turned it back on and it started up!

I have not had an unsuccessful startup since then and I think the problem is resolved. My computer tech friend shared this information with another tech who suspects that the battery itself needed to charge another part (don't ask me which) and once that other part was charged, the computer was good to go.

I'm not making any claims that this will work for everyone. All I'm sharing is how I got to where I am now, after thinking that the battery did not resolve the issue at first.

 

Reminds me of jump starting a car. Glad it worked out

 

I will give this a try. I have been using an old Dell 510m laptop with XP - but only 40GB HD and 1GB ram. Even thought about upgrading this one! But it runs too hot and leadsme to believe heat may have been the demise of my 1526. But, like I said, i'll give it time to recharge or whatever - who knows. BTW, I do not get the normal sequence of icon lights on boot up - do you? Thanks for the tip!

 

I wasn't getting the sequence of icon lights at all. Your post from October 31 describes EXACTLY what was happening with my PC. It's been over a month and it's still going perfectly. I hope you're able to get yours going.

 

I just registered so that I could thank Micman for the excellent instructions! Thanks to you, my notebook is now fixed!!! The only problem I had was when I popped the battery out, the plastic holder broke! I figured its a three year old computer anyway, so I held the battery in place with a clothespin and put a dab of gorrilla glue on one edge of the battery! Thank You Very Much

 

Thank you for the excellent guide to replace the CMOS battery. I replaced mine on my Dell 1526 and it booted right up. For your information and others faced with this problem. There is an excellent video on how to take get to the mother board. How-To-Tutorial: Dell inspiron 1525/1526 DC Power Jack Circuit Board Replacement How-To-Tutorial: Dell inspiron 1525/1526 DC Power Jack Circuit Board Replacement - YouTube.
If you have another computer, you can play it and pause it as you dismantle your laptop.

 

Hi micman and others,

I also have an Inspiron 1526 that will not boot. Doing the FN + PowerButton test gives a blinking num lock on the left, solid caps lock in the middle and a solid scroll lock on the right. Power ON LED on the front is solid blue and battery LED on the front alternates blinking orange and blinking blue. The fan is going but nothing ever comes up on the screen.

So I opened it up and made sure everything was connected. I tried reseating the RAM and processor. I know my AC adapter is good. The problem remains. Is this consistant with what others have solved by replacing the CMOS battery? Thank you for any help in advance and thank you micman for posting all your pictures of disassembly.

- Charlie

 

Update to My last Post:

I went through with the procedure for replacing the CR2032 CMOS battery.
Sure enough when I got to it I used a battery tester and the battery was completely dead. Took a few hours to get to it and what a pain in the . Dell couldn't have just had a compartment to get to it?

Anyways, it now boots! That was the problem! Thank you!

Only 2 problems remain:
1. DVD drive in modular bay isn't recognized. I assume this is a driver issue. Have to do some internet searches. Model GSA-T21N.
2. Displays message "AC power adapter wattage and type cannot be determined. Battery may not charge." on startup. And it doesn't charge like it says. I have a replacement AC adapter but it is designed for this model laptop. Wondering if replacing the AC connector module on the motherboard might fix that problem.

Any thoughts?

Also if you are wondering what that cable in the middle connects to in this picture:
http://i920.photobucket.com/albums/ad50/Micman1022/Dell Inspiron 1526/IMG_1238.jpg
It is for the bluetooth module if you have one, else it remains disconnected.

Thanks,

- Charlie

 

@chuckguy17: when the cmos battery dies, the bios settings are lost along with it. My guess is you may need to open your BIOS (its the first screen you see after you power the laptop on) by hitting the appropriate key right after powering the laptop on. I can't remember the right key, but it has to be one of the following: esc, delete, f2, f10 or f12. Those are the standard BIOS entry keys used by manufacturers.

Once you are in the BIOS look around for settings relating to power and maybe run the battery calibration just for fun. I know I'm being vague, but it's because I don't have that laptop on hand to be able to look around the BIOS settings and point you in a more specific direction.

If that's not the issue, it may very well be the ac jack on the motherboard, or it could just be that your adapter already died (some of the replacements are not exactly made to last). Drop a note if none of that solves your problem.

 

Update on 2 Problems:

Thanks for the reply micman. It's nice you still reply to these 1526 posts 2 years later.

Problem 1:

I did check the BIOS options. There really wasn't much of anything there to modify. Just said AC Adapter = Unknown device installed.
See: imgur: the simple image sharer

I figured maybe an update to the BIOS would resolve the problem. It had BIOS version A06. I used some Windows 98 files on a flash drive to upgrade the BIOS to A16. No difference. Still the same error message on startup.
See: http://imgur.com/TKUR5

This is the AC adapter that I'm using:
See: imgur: the simple image sharer

It is brand new off Ebay. Notice that 19.5V x 3.34A = 65.13W.
It claims to need 65W.
Maybe I should find a 70W or 75W power adapter to try.

Next step might be to try and replace this for $5
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-DC-Pow...766?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item5d2cb99e7e

Problem 2:

More pressing to me is the inability of the computer to recognize the DVD/CD Drive. This error message pops up everytime I start the computer.
See: http://imgur.com/BU4NL

When I got the computer it had a TS-L632 installed and it couldn't recognize it. I figured that the DVD/CD drive was broken so I ordered a drive on Ebay for $30 that was labeled as a 1526 drive. The model is GSA-T21N. Same error message though. It can't be a driver issue right because this message is independent of the hard drive. Means the BIOS must recognize it right?

Solution:

I think I might order a new motherboard off Ebay to fix these 2 problems.
Dell Inspiron 1526 AMD Motherboard KY755 GY997 TESTED GOOD | eBay

Before I do, I'm checking around on the internet to see if anyone had any other ideas. I got this laptop for free because it was thrown away and thought to be dead (CMOS battery fixed that). I want to fix up the rest of the problems and give it to my girlfriend who is still using a 2004 P4 Compaq laptop. This would be a big upgrade if I could fix these problems.

- Thanks micman and everyone else on Notebook Review

 

MICMAN, Thanks so much. I just got through your instructions...worked great. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

 

I did have one problem when I took everything apart, replaced the battery, and put it all back again. Only the left side of the keyboard is working. Any ideas? I did take it apart again (back to the keyboard ribbon), checked out the ribbon connection, and put it back again. But nothing worked. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks!

 

I think you should go with the cheapest option you can find for a 90w universal ac adapter. That way it will be usable for the unforseeable future should you decide you need to switch laptops.

Try the ac jack fix first before replacing the whole motherboard, but don't do either till you know 100% that the issue isn't your ac adapter.

Your dvd drive problem should go away when you fix the power problem. If it doesn't, report back and we'll tackle it from there.


@ladyRP: I think all you can do with that is make sure the ribbon is seated fully. Sometimes they just break and you have to replace the whole thing. I've had some keyboard scares like that before but it usually works again after I re-seat the ribbon cable a few times. Try to be very gentle with the casing when you put it back together so you don't disturb the keyboard connection too much.

To all the new members who have been helped by this, thanks for much for posting. Let me encourage you to stick around on NBR forums as you can learn a lot and there is a great community of people here. Keep reading and posting and help make this the best knowledge base for laptops anywhere in the world!
- Micman

 

Thanks for the help on my 1526....$ 4.69 later I'm working fine.Great pickup for 25 bucks

 

Having mostly the same issue with my inspiron 1526. When i power on with or without the battery in, the screen will flash on for about 1/4 of a second and then go back to a blank screen. Ive ruled out the screen by hooking it up to a monitor and to a tv with an hdmi cable. Im going to try the cmos battery next. The only difference is that the caps lock lights are not flashing and not on at all. The hard drive will start to spin when first powered on The only light that will light up are the touch volume and play,stop, skip track buttons do light up. Ive tried booting many times in a row with battery, and without battery with only ac charge and no luck with anything. Ill post the results after changing the cmos battery tomorrow. Thank you for the guide though, hopefully it will solve the problem.

 

Update on the laptop, everything is working great. The CR2032 battery fixed the problem. I installed Ubuntu 11.10 on it since the computer didn't have an operating system, but it works great now. Thanks for writing out the guide, i appreciate it alot.

 

No prob. You know that as long as you have the windows sticker on the bottom of the laptop you can always reinstall using the key printed on it? You just have to use the correct oem version of windows which you can find through a stickied thread here on the software forums. Instructions are included in that thread, here:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/win...-7-download-links-just-like-vista-before.html

 

Hey, i also have a Dell Inspiron 1526. however mine wont power up at all.. Ive had the motherboard changed 4 times by Dell and well just out of the warrenty and it goes completely off.. ive had it 18 months at the most.

The problem i have is when i try to power it up via the mains ( since the battery doesnt charge for some strange reason ) it wont power up and trips the mains adapter.. so i tried my adapter off my new Dell Vostro and it trips the charger on that.. however if i unplug the charger from the mains and plug it back in BOTH work on the Vostro but not on the Inspiron..
Im not 100% sure if the motherboard has gone yet again or not since the Inspiron was the first laptop i had ( and im normally a Desktop kind of person ) so when it comes to laptops i dont have a clue.

Anyone else know whats going on with this because i dont really want to replace it as my daughter said she would use it if i can get it fixed.

Cheers in advanced

 

I replaced theCMOS battery and it ran fine on only battery power for about 45 min. Then is started to shut its self off and got very hot. What did i d
o wrong? Also no lights on the power button or number lock or scroll lock, the panel by the screen.
OK sorry fixed it wire for fan not plugged in.

 

Sounds like a short. This could be anywhere, but they are usually in the DC jack itself, or the small board the DC jack is on. Both are cheap to replace but not as easy as the CMOS battery.

Glad you figured it out. I couldn't have helped you anyway without more detail, so glad you were able to piece the puzzle together.

 

Now i have a problem. The battery worked like i said but now i gave it back to my friend and it just shut off he said and it will not power on at all. Will a broken CMOS battery holder prevent it from power on?? The comp worked while he was with me in my room and was working when i gave it back to him he was gone about 1 hour.

 

Just wanted to say thank you for taking the time to document and upload your break down and repair of this laptop. Your guide worked perfectly on a friends laptop that he brought to me having a similar issue, minus the caps lock, num lock and flock keys lighting.

Again thank you for taking the time to document and share your findings.

 

Just wanted to add my own experience (as of an hour ago):

I was getting a black screen on my Inspiron 1525 (no POST, nothing). Starting up with Fn-Power showed Num/Caps/Scroll pattern: Flash-Steady-Steady (you can find the codes here, though they're maddeningly vague).

I had already reseated the CPU (T5750 @ 2GHz), so I tried replacing it with another one I had lying around from the same family (T5250 @ 1.5Ghz), but with no effect.

As a last resort before selling it for parts, I opened it up once again to replace the CMOS battery, put it back together, and it works!

Given that a dead CMOS battery can brick the machine, they really should make it easier to replace - opening up the Inspiron 1525 is much harder than it needs to be (compared to, say, an Inspiron 1520).

 

Thank you micman for posting the procedures on how to replace the CMOS battery for this laptop. My computer now works!

The screen on my laptop was working fine before the old CMOS battery was drained. However, after installing the new CMOS battery, the screen on my laptop is black and I can only view my computer files using an external screen via the HDMI output.

I have checked all the wires in the computer and I am positive that I have reconnected everything. Although I have connected the media control buttons connector that connects the hinge cover to the system board, I had difficulty doing it. Could it be possible that I damaged this tiny wire and if so will it cause my laptop screen not to work?

Thanks again.

 

Dude i just fixed my laptop. Thank you VERY MUCH for your post!

 

Two years later and this thread is still seeing new success stories all the time. I'm glad I could help, and I hope you stick around Notebook Review forums to help others with the knowledge you gained from the experience. See you around,

-micman

 

At the risk of sounding redundant two years + later:

Thank you micman for posting the procedures on how to replace the CMOS battery for this laptop that was and still is Awesome!


We originally had the blinking light issue you mentioned in the original post on my cusins 1526 so we followed the step by step you provided and it is now not powering up at all with or without battery not sure why we will be tearing it down and redoing the step by step procedures to double check for anything we might have missed.

we will keep you posted!

Ps: Technician error ..... tore down and rebuilt and she is alive.... However we are now getting a md partition table error any ideas we cannot get past the splash screen or enter any diognostic tools

Thanks all



E

 

There is a tool called Hiren's Boot CD that I find handy for fixing boot error and partition errors. It works great for situations that the built in Windows Recovery can't fix. Here you go, have at it http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=...9YGoBw&usg=AFQjCNHCtp37jTzNWpxXdXdCJN5W7cLQeQ

Try one of the "MBR Tools" and consult the Hiren's Boot CD page for detailed instructions if you need it.

 

Same with me here I bought a 1526 thinking I would have to send it to a repair shop to fix the video problem I thought. But after finding your post by accident and chance but I am also a member as well on here. I did just like you mentioned got a new battery and took apart the dell and got to the CMOS battery. Replaced it and reassembled back together and powered right up and went to the setup and updated the info and now it works. Wow....I bought it cheap thinking I could use it for parts but now I will keep it going and sell it if the price is right I now have like two 1525 and one 1526 and a parts 1526 if I should find another to put back together. I can't say thanks enough for a 2 year old posting but sometimes it takes time for others to come and find such postings and the fixes which could be a very simple fix as CMOS battery replacement. I bought a two pack 2032 pack but I have the exra battery when I need it. But so far boots up and will now reformat and see how it goes. Thanks again for the simple fix that saves alot of money and headache.

 

Hello,
do you think this could be a possibility for my laptop as well? It is a 1520 and I have written down the symptoms here:

Hello, I have a problem with my Inspiron 1520 laptop.

When I turn it on the screen just stays black. LEDs are flashing and the fan starts. But then nothing happens. No dell logo. No boot screen.

I hooked it up to an external monitor but there is also no signal.

I made the display test by pressing D and power up and I can see the colors on the LCD but it is very dark and when it reboots it is completely black.

I don't think it is booting up all the way to windows because I can't enable caps num or scroll lock. Nothing happens when I press the buttons.

I also booted up with pressing fn and after a minute or so I hear following beep sounds: *chime chime chime* beep-beep-beep pause beep-beep pause beep and then repeat.

I had the graphic card replaced not even 2 years ago under warranty and I think it might be broken again?

The system power light stays on as well as my Bluetooth light. The hard disk light goes on for like 2 seconds and then stays off and the system seems to be frozen.

The Num Lock light is on when it is stuck without video. Caps and num lock are off. This doesn't seem to be a code that dell systems have to find the problem.

I also tried to remove battery and ac adapter and i pressed the power button for a minute in this state and tried to start with only ac adapter but it doesn't change anything.

When I press f2 on boot it might be entering bios or at least it tries to because I can hear beeps when I press buttons then.

Please tell me if I could try anymore and what I should do next.

Thanks in advance, Pjotr

Edit: I just tried it and it didn't help. Still the same. Bugger.

 

I recently had this problem on my Inspiron 1526, and the solution you came up with fixed my problem. Thank you so much! Even though you wrote your solution a few years ago, this is a great solution. Also this is one of the best written tutorials I've used to make a repair. This is even better than the Dell manual.

Thanks for your great work.