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

[demonhotrod]

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

[JellyGeo]

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...

[10char]

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.

[SomeFormOFhuman]

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.

[JellyGeo]

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!!

[demonhotrod]

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.

Originally Posted by 10char

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

Did you have any video problems lately?

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.

Originally Posted by SomeFormOFhuman

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.

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?

[demonhotrod]

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?

[Sharpnd]

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:

DV9500 and Nvidia 8600M GS


Good luck!

[millermagic]

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

[Sharpnd]

Originally Posted by millermagic

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.