My dell laptop just up and died

What is happening to it? I work a lot with Dells everyday if you can tell me what make/model it is I can try to help you

i hit power and nothing happens but the HD light stays on. cd rom wont open, no post, nothing happens really.

well im about as mad as ive ever been before for being burned on a purchase. dell wont cover my laptop. AT ALL. the warrenty "ran out" in june, i bought this in march!!!!! this isnt even 9 months old! im so flippin mad right now. im never buying another dell again!!! im certainly not willing to pay to have it fixed as it doesnt perform all that great anyways. it was a cheap laptop but i paid over 800 bucks for it!!!! i can get much better machines out there now for alot less than that. im litterally furious. ony thing ill do is see if i can get a cheap parts machine or sell this one. god im so angry. youd expect someone to stand by their product for more then 3 months!!!!!!!!

those things come with a 1yr warranty. I know that for a fact. Better pull out the docs and hand them to the people at the store.

i dunno man im not the ones talking to dell cuz its not in my name. but its my best friend and he is trying his best.

punkpiper, you said you work on dells alot? im thinking the internal power supply is bad. i havnt taken it apart yet but its an inspiron 1000 or an 1100. i dont have it with me and i plain ol forgot what it was. it has 2.2ghz celeron 512mb ram, 40gb hd. 15" lcd. its a pretty basic machine it did was it was suppoesd to do up untill 2 weeks ago it was locking up randomly and just last friday it died all together. if you think this is AT ALL a user fixable thing because i am pretty good with small electronics, but i have no clue what the inside of this thing looks like.

Hey there one thing I can say is Dell WILL honour their contracts, it sounds like you bought it used did you or is it a referb model? the service docs are here
http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/ins5100/en/index.htm
I would pull the HD, RAM, batt, and DVD drive and see if you can get it to beep or give you any sort of responce, it could be your power board if it is the MB is fried.

well me and a buddy took the whole she-bang apart and i mean everything, cleaner it all, put 'er back together and ill be surpised it works!! works fine now. im stumped as to the exact problem it had but who knows how long it will last... ill just do it again if it does the same problem

It almost sounds like there was a loose connection. Almost like the Apple III that required you to drop it a good 6" and reseat the chips

I have had problems go away like this in desktops, that go away after you strip them down, and reseat everything. And remember, b/c laptops are mobile, there it is more possible to loosen up things. That may be the case.

IIRC the Inspiron 1000 and 1100 only come with a 90 day warranty. To get the 1 year warranty you have to pay extra.

Posting the news of a dead Dell in AppleFritter forums seems about as likely to elicit much sympathy as a notice of a dead Republican in the Democratic Underground Message Board (fittingly with an acronym of D.U.M.B)

No actual politics beyond humorous observations, please. I'm a registered independent and very happy being able to free mock both parties.

why does it being a dell matter? this is a gathering of people helping each other out the best we can, doesnt matter what we use really

Well in all fairness he did post it in "Other computers"

I have the EXACT same model with the SAME problem!!! of course mine is 2 months out of warranty. I suspect it is my battery which slowly over 14 months would no longer hold a charge and then one day---WHAMMO! dark screen but HD light comes on

if you could detail what you did to fix problem, I would be much obliged - I NEED HELP BAD!!!!!

Have you tried removing the battery then starting the machine? Sometimes bad batteries can keep laptops from booting. If that doesn't help, then it's likely your motherboard's fried.

i stripped my machine down to the bare bones, and i mean DOWN to nothing. cleaned every connection possible with rubbing alcohol. i took the crap plastic off the ram thats soldered to the mother board. i put it back together and it did some REALLY odd things. rebooted and it was sorta ok. it still messes up from time to time, but sad part is, i slam my hand down across the palm rests and it will go back to normal. one of the only times in my life have i seen abuse make a machine work. leave it to dell to screw up something so bad. they stoped making my machine model and now they make slower machines. What the heck is goin on at DELL??? other then the occasional hang and black screen its been an awsome machine provided i can get it to come back on if it goes out. wierd, its been happening less and less. Battery life is still outstanding on this machine though, i get over 2 hours surfing the net wirelessly. screen is perfect still, trackpad is POOR but it works. nothing like having a can of worms for a laptop. i was right ready to put the mobo through the dishwasher last time it wouldnt run i was so angry with it. it is a loose connection but i cannot figure out where for the life of me!

if I let it charge for like 2 days it will boot up to the Windows XP (Home Ed) desktop screen

if I simply plug it in and try to turn it on, it never posts BIOS

and as you may already know, you can't run this model Dell with the battery removed even if its plugged in...

the battery life kept getting shorter and shorter to the point where it would only stay charged for 30 minutes unplugged before hibernating. There is no damage whatsoever to machine and it has been taken very good care of.

so it's either a bad battery (my likeliest culprit as it is the crappy NiMh type) or possibly a bad battery circuit connection. Fact is, if the battery is installed and the power cord is plugged in the juice makes it all the way to the board and cooling fan and lights up the HD green light and the battery life slowing going to zero makes me almost positive this is a battery issue...and I'm guessing it's no coincidence that new Dell replacement batteries are only avail in the ultra expensive Lithium-ion type at $160 each...bastards!!!

I believe this computer model was designed with a battery designed for failure at a certain point to force purchase of expensive replacement battery. Batteries Plus replacement is avail but only in Lithium-ion at $160 + S&H (Special Order) ----- and extra god damnit for Dell making EVERY model of laptop a different battery shape / size...

long story short, your laptop is exhibiting the exact same symptons though which is the only reason I hesitate buying a new battery which would be unreturnable once purchased...

I wish one of you "happy" Dell Insprion 1000 owners lived in Denver so I could swap my "questionable" battery for one know to work...that would answer the question

I live in Denver, don't suppose any of you live here or nearby?

i tell ya if yours doesnt run without the battery plugged in then something is REALLY wrong with it, mine works just fine without it. i also bought the 65w/hour battery. ive run it completely dead a few times, works great still a year later.

wow! this computer has never ran without battery plugged in since new!

I think we are narrowing it down here...ask me more questions

all i can tell you is that i stripped mine down to nothing and cleaned every living thing inside of it and took off sticky plastic stuff on the mother board where it wasnt needed so it could stay colder. why did they put plastic on the ram i have no idea! these machines run so hot youd think they would know better. im more then willing to bet that they use different parts in these things or what ever they have leftover from other laptops on the motherboard. i still to this day never really figured out why it stops working but when it does now i just hit it and it comes back to life (i am not telling you to do this) but thats my story lol.

oh one more thing, i did however when taking it apart take the Cmos battery out and let it sit for a few hours without it. figured it would clear what ever it had stored. ive even run it without that battery before and it doesnt seem to make a difference? wierd!!!! but ive pulled the battery a couple times now to see what it does. i dont know if it really helps or not. i just go with the tear down and rebuild method, like my old performa 6200 seems to help lol.

they make them run hot (certain models) - I truly believe they are trying to create machines that will not last beyond a couple of years (the low end models). I have owned different brand laptops and they lasted for 5+ years

lower end Dell laptops (Inspiron 1000, 1100, 5500 models) as I am finding out through extensive investigation fail typically at 14 to 24 months in their life cycle. And guess what? Heat related board or component failure is the cause in EVERY case I have found...Also, battery life (NiMH OEM types) fail at 13 to 18 months into these models lifecycles...

There is no profit if you build a laptop that lasts 5 years anymore so I believe Dell engineers are designing lower end models to fail at a certain point in the lifecycle of the machine...why else would the pastic wrap on the board and certain components be there? There is no reason for it other than shock resistance but the board and major components are not rubber shock mounted anymore like the old days so that's not a reason...and the location of the cooling fan and intake breather vent (on the bottom of these models) makes no earthly sense in those locations.

I'll bet if you were to ask a former Dell design engineer that indeed these low end models were designed to not last beyond a certain point

I will not buy another Dell ever. I plan to purchase only corporate model Lenovo or HP/Compaq from now on...what a joke Dell is these days. They used to be the best and now the company is plaqued by bad consumer reviews and poor longevity with their products.

i dont think i would ever buy another home unit but a business class one with a nice warrenty sure. these are truely sad machines, as i have cut my usage on it down to only at work!

today mine started doing what it always has been doing. it wouldnt turn on for a while and now i think the data on the HD has gone bye bye from turning it on and off so much. here's the deal, i took it apart while turning it on and off. i un pluged the track pad (keep in mind this has been flaky the whole time ive owned it) and now it starts without question, and tries to boot windows. it wont boot for some reason, wont know till i re-install windows again. as soon as i figure out what is causing it to not boot i will repost. i hope this is all thats wrong with it.

managed to boot to the desktop where every single operation took about 5 minutes to complete, where i found one of my partitions had been corrupted and showing 0 k space used and free. i reformatted the partition and im back online with it now. i still think the main reason the machine itself messed up can be contributed to the trackpad.

it still crashes when it wants to. i dont know what the deal is.....

If you think that it could be the trackpad, can you disconnect it and boot.
If it can boot you could plug in a USB mouse and test it.

i use a mouse on a daily basis because track pad always worked horribly. i have since been using it all day and its no better running but it will boot back up... i give up, im parting it out on ebay, and gonna buy an intel mini.

Just to let you know there is problems with the power jack on the back and we didn't know we sold the laptop and now the person who bought it blames us!!! Buy as is. But i see there is problems with them and dell should recall them. It's defective. They use excuses it's the battery to get you to buy more crap on a computer that is defective.

Sad thing it consumer relations let them get away with it. and our school purchases desktops from dell they get a good price. isn't that crazy and you have to keep sending the product in when it goes bad. I so agree with you, it' garbage alot of inspirons were recalled but not the 1000 or 1100 what is the difference it's a dell inspiron and they should of recalled it. I sold the laptop to someone we didn't know it was going to dye and the lady keeps insisting we did. It worked when she bought it and almost 3 weeks after she buys it, it died. Don't blame me blame dell.

Yea i sold that dell for parts a long time ago on ebay AS-IS. the winner of the motherboard left me feedback saying, "works as described" like they thought it was going to work great when they bought it. either way i bought an HP and looooove it. I made the dell mistake once and ill never do it again, i dont care how flipping cheap they are.

Hello, I have been working with a dell a while but then decided to check out Apple's computers after using Apple II and macintosh computers back in the days and made a horrible mistake of switching to PC, I switched back to Apple macs again and think it was the best choice I ever made. I would look into one. Yeah they are kind of $$$ expensive $$$ but WAY worth it. You'll love them.

i do have a mac still but cant pull enough money together to get newer one.