dell not turning on.....

[babylappy]

Ok I have a dell c800 latitude, and every time i turn it on the power light comes on, and then 5 seconds later it turns off again, nothing loads the screen does not come on. The battery and ac are fine have tried other batteries and ac, still the same problem. Anyone seen this before, i am going mad trying to work it out. By the way it is out of warranty and dell a useless anyway. Your help is much appricieated

Hi babylappy - Welcome to TechIMO!!

Dells have never turned me on, either

Sorry, couldn't resist that one...

Does you get any screen flicker at all? Can you hear hard drives spinning up?

Sounds as if it could be something simple, like a sticky off switch. Or something unfixable, like a faulty motherboard

Laptops are complex bits of electronics,. more so than PC's, and have few generic bits to them. If you can't get it to boot at all on AC, I'm afraid it needs to get checked by a laptop fixer.

IMO, anyway. Anyone else??

Cheers
Mick

[babylappy]

nothing happens at all, with ac and battery, no screen flicker no hd action, tried everything possible, swith is fine tested voltages the works, it really has got my puzzled, thanks for the reply

[TOAD6147]

I'll second that e-motion. Sounds like it could be a bad P/S unit and Dell is about the only ones that could make it right. But then they are 'useless' in your estimation so I guess you'e screwed. Welcome to TechIMO.

[Tomteriffic]

The possibility exists that the voltage is gettin ginto the machine, but not being properly distributed once it gets there. There can be a bazillion causes for this, but usually it resides at the level of the voltage regulation and distribution level, right where the power enters the comuter, be it by battery or power brick.

A good laptop tech can usually tell you pretty quickly whether it's worth pursuing a fix or not. Sometimes it's just a couple of capacitors or a transistor that need replacing on the motherboard. Other times, if the whole VRM or something is shot, then the parts (like a new motherboard) may not even be available.

It's worth a shot if you can find a good laptop tech to at least check it out.

I've almost dumped a couple of desktop PC motherboards because I thought they'd gone south for keeps and my tech was able to bring them back to life by replacing a handful of capacitors.

[shadows]

I have an Inspiron 8200. I've had that happen to me twice since I've had it a month...it usually happens to me when the batterys go dead and have no power...what I found works is this

Plug the laptop into the wall..turn it on so you get the power light, and the battery light on...then when nothing comes up..press the power button once and turn it off..give it a few seconds and then hold the power button on..hold it for at least 5 seconds..this normally kicks it on..if not repeat the process.