Dell Laptop Wont Turn Back On for more than 3 seconds.?

Question

My Dell Latitude Laptop was starting up after a few try, sometimes only the fan comes on for 3 seconds then shut down.  Now the computer won't come on at all, only turns on with the fax for 3 seconds the screen remains blank. Before after a few tries I could get it on, then it took longer and longer, now it just won't turn on at all with the exception of the fax, like it trying to turn on but cannot.

Renee G · Answer

Blank screen?  Blinking white vertical line in upper left hand corner would indicate hard drive is bad or the operating system has gotten badly corrupted (usually by a failing hard drive) but I had one laptop that did something similar & it turned out that one of the sticks of RAM had gone bad.

First - turn it off, remove the battery, remove the power cord, and press & hold the power button to clear power.

Turn it over and remove the RAM cover on the bottom of the laptop (DIMM B) & pull that stick of RAM out.

Plug the power back in (no battery) and try rebooting.  If you get the same image, you'll need to do the flea power reset again, then carefully remove the plastic strip along the top of the laptop base, above the keyboard, undo the three screws holding the keyboard in place, and carefully move it to one side & swap the stick of RAM in DIMM A for the one that you pulled from DIMM B.  Put the keyboard back into place & screw it down.

You  can leave the plastic off for now.

Plug it in & reboot.

If it still doesn't reboot and you have a Live Linux or other OS install disk, put it in the optical drive and try running Linux off the disk (laptop works but hard drive may not work) or starting a repair operation on the computer (if you get a message that the hard drive is bad, then you need to replace it)..

If none of these work - then it is either both sticks of RAM have gone bad & you need more DDR2 RAM or something else has gone bad.  The service manual off the Dell Technical Support page will help troubleshoot.  Parts are on eBay and in electronics stores - good luck.

It is easier to slide a working hard drive into a "new" laptop that you've bought working off eBay or Amazon without a hard drive & change the Microsoft activation code to match the one on the bottom of the new body than it is to fix the motherboard at home, in my opinion.  The "Frankencomputer" will probably run you about what a repair would and should have been tested by the seller.

If you get it up & running - go to the Dell Technical Support page & run the complete diagnostics test, to see if any parts are having problems.

Dell Inc. · Answer

Hi Olga K,

If LED on AC adapter is on but the system doesn’t turns on, perform flea power. Remove the AC adapter and battery, now hold the power button down for 15-20 seconds and then put the battery and the adapter back in and start the computer. Check if it works.

If the system doesn’t turns on you may have to replace motherboard.

Also, check for any damage on the laptop port or AC adapter. Try to turn it on by removing the battery and keeping only the adapter connected.

Test with a different good known compatible AC adapter and battery.

Hope this helps.

Thanks and Regards
Priyanka S

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Dell Laptop Wont Turn Back On for more than 3 seconds.?

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