help! dell shuts off with no warning...

hey all. i have a dell latitude d600 in the house and it's on the fritz. i would appreciate it if you could help me diagnose the problem.

today when i was using it, it just turned off. clunk. no warning. no errors. on- then without warning, beep, or anything- clicked off. when it clicks off there is no shutdown, it is instantly off as if it suddenly lost power.

tried to get it to reboot. now it just turns off within 5 minutes of booting. sometimes it boots, others it won't. sometimes it will only run for like two seconds.

tried running in safe mode- clunks off in safe mode as well.

is there a way of telling what is causing the problem? it seems like a hardware problem, and my guess is the ram- but how can i know for sure?

help!

 

How often do you clean the inside?
Is this on AC adaptor?(stupid Q but, nessecairy)

 

the inside has never been cleaned. i'll check that out now and let you know. it doesn't seem to be heat, because the fan never comes on (it does turn for a second when power comes on, so it can still spin)- unless the fan is not coming on and that is causing the heat. hehehe. i have tried it plugged in with battery, on battery alone, and on AC alone- same thing.

edit- the inside looks pretty good. a bit of dust, but nothing out of the ordinary. gave it a quick clean. still losing power at random times. could the ram need re-seating?

 

Try memtest then first with both DIMMs then try it with one & then the one you took out. You may have a case of bad RAM.
Run memtest for about 1 minute @ first then increase(you exit by hitting esc)

 

are you a technician?

anyways, i would think that its either the motherboard or processor...most likely the motherboard.

 

i don't know if it will stay on long enough to run memtest. i assume i would have to download and install it, and i don't think she's gonna make it that long. hehe.

edit: yeah. no way it's going to stay alive that long. i'm lucky if it boots up all the way. turns off within two minutes or so reliably now. ugh.

edit: got it to start up! i'm testing it with memtest now. don't know how long it'll stay on. this is the longest it has stayed on in awhile

 

I'll bet you $50 (well, maybe $0.25) the heatsink/fan is full of gunk and therefore can't properly cool the processor. It gets too hot and just shuts down.

Do you have pets at all in your household? Cat hair is notorious for this.

 

well if you read he said he opened it up and it was fine.

edit: i accept paypal for the .25

 

damn. got it to boot, ran memtest for about 2 minutes. no errors. then- blam, shutdown. when you guys boot up, does your fan run for awhile? because when i turn on this thing, it just spins for like a second and then shuts off. either it isn't hot enough to run the fan, or maybe the fan isn't running when it should? the laptop does not feel hot at all even when it shuts down...

going to try to memtest again and reseat the ram.

 

i think its the motherboard. that is not a typical syndrome of a bad ram module. but to be sure, remove the heatsink, reapply paste, then try again.

 

Sorry.....skimmed over the posts and missed the "Edit".

 

well, all that happens is the battery charge light blinks dimly when i try to turn it on with no battery. when the battery is installed- nothing. yikes. anyone had this before? ram/power/motherboard? what do you think?

 

ok, well then try a different psu. presuming you have one. it sounds to be that or the motherboard.

 

ok. so i have found what seems to be the problem. it won't charge. at all. if i plug a power supply into the laptop, the little green light on the power supply just pops off. weird.

so, it looks like this problem happened because i had no power. the computer clicked off, and i could restart because the battery had a little juice. this continued several times, with the laptop lasting less and less each time until the battery is now kaput. the laptop just won't take any power, not to charge the battery, or even run without the battery.

i can use the same power supply in another dell, so it's not the power supply. the laptop can't take a charge! balls! what to do to fix this? i think the mobo/ram/hd are ok, because they would work fine when i tried several times to get it working, even though the computer didn't stay on long...

maybe i'm a masochist, but this diagnosing problems thing is kinda fun. i should have been a tech.

 

Well, if the brick and battery ain't working, and another battery and brick ain't working it's the mobo, because there is no PSU in a laptop like there is in say a desktop. It's all integrated baby. Cuz I never seen no PSU in these suckers when I rip them open .

Heres comes the music - Give Dell (DUN DUN DUN DUNNN) a call

 

oh, sorry. don't know if i wasn't specific. the brick doesn't work. i have 3 bricks that don't work on it but work on another laptop. but i don't have a second battery to try. i think if i had a fully charged battery the laptop would work until the battery was out of juice... because it tried to boot just fine with no errors when the battery was still struggling to stay alive. the battery is probably in a deep discharge now, so it's probably garbage, sigh.

i bet the stupid DC acceptor thingy is broken in some way so it shorts out the power supply every time. i think this is pretty common on laptops. man, apple has the right idea here with their magnetic adapter thing. i'm gonna try to find a charged battery, and if that works i will either try to get the AC thing fixed, or just get a docking station and use that to charge it. hehe. does the docking station charge the laptop too? i think it does on this model. let me know if you can confirm this...

not going to mess with plugging it in anymore. i think all i can do is more damage, i'll just concentrate on finding a charged battery. do a lot of dells use this same battery? i hope my gf's 1100 uses the same one. nope. damn.

 

i think your motherboard is bad!

my 4 years of experience fixing dell desktops and laptops tell me this

Are you under warranty?

 

That's a good theory! The stupid adapter on the laptop for the AC could be screwed up. I've seen it happen on laptops before.

Apple so don't have the right idea though, I've heard a lot of problems with those magnetic AC plugs! If rumors are true you'd be worse off with a Apple. Good luck getting one of those brainwashed zombies to admit to anything though.

nizzy1115, might have the right idea though. It's impossible to know unless you have parts to swap in and out. But try and get a hold of a battery!

 

of course the psu isnt built into the laptop. It is your charger! The charger is the PSU.

 

if your laptop doesnt turn on with out a battery in it while it is plugged into the wall is not the batteries fault. you yourself said that the green light goes off when you plug it into your laptop. this means the charging port built onto the motherboard has a problem. You will need to get a new motherboard to correct this problem.

 

Oh, I know.. just making my thoughts clear, that's all.

I figured that out when I plugged it into the wall

 

i suppose i might have to replace the motherboard if i choose to charge the laptop from the normal AC charger. but i am thinking of using a dock, and getting around the DC charger jack on the back of the computer altogether.

can anyone confirm that the dock charges the computer? nizzy, i appreciate your tech knowledge... do you think i could just use a dock? it might be cheaper than replacing the mobo. don't know if this thing is even worth it!

of course, it may be that something further down from the jack is fried, leaving me with no recourse other than mobo replacement. oh, the humanity!

i thought it was pretty common for these jacks to crap out?

 

Well, if the laptop has one of those typical proprietary jacks somewhere for a docking station, I'd assume it'd work. Can't see it being charged any other way.

 

well. i have tried a docking station. when i put the power supply plug into the power station with this d600 attached, the power station LED turns off right as it is plugged in, just like it does without the docking station. argh.

i also pressed the battery tester on the battery and it says the battery has a full charge. yikes! i thought the battery was totally dead...could this problem even remotely be cause by bad ram? i wish it were. but it sounds like mobo to me.

 

Why does my name always have to mean bad things (my nick is Fritz)...

I agree with the others that your problem is a motherboard issue. Bad RAM usually leads to lockups and BSODs, but won't cause intermitent shutdowns...

On my Dell i5160 the BIOS would tell you on next boot if the machine shutdown due to an overheating issue. So since you're not mentioning those I think it is safe to assume there isn't a heat issue occuring (as I believe the D600 is newer than the i5160?)

If you want to get really geeky you can disassemble the system and look for any exploded capacitors (will be showing what looks like mold growing on them or salt around them or other signs that it leaked).

You can also run a few more test cases by removing everything you can from the system to get it down as bare as possible. Yank out the CD Rom, HD, etc. and boot it into the BIOS or Linux via USB drive and see if the shutdown occurs still. I doubt this will produce seperate results, but I've seen some wild symptoms from failed secondary components in my days...

 

well, i took the whole laptop apart. even with practically everything off the mobo- the green light on the adapter pops off right when i plug it into the laptop. methinks this d600 is now a paperweight. ram problems won't cause the power adapter to short, now, will they? argh!

funny thing- the battery is showing at full charge. i had previously thought the computer was working on battery only, and drained it to the last drop- apparently i was wrong. pressing the battery level button gives me 5 lights. blargh!