Dell Laptop Problem

[PMRiley]

I have an (old-ish) Dell Inspiron 5000 Laptop and this machine has served me well in the time that I have had it.

My problem just started yesterday out of the blue. I had been using it quite happily to surf the web and when I had finished, I switched it into hibernation mode as per normal.

When I came to switch it back on, there was no display at all, the HDD was spinning (Not making any strange noises) but there was no BIOS beep codes or anything.

I removed the HDD, CDRom and battery and even the modem card and suddenly it started up correctly (Apart from the obvious problems!)

Thinking that one of the components had failed, I replaced each item in turn, testing it as I went along. By the end I had replaced everything (Including the wireless PCMCIA adapter card) and it still started up correctly.

Presuming that this must have been 'one of those things', I just hoped everything was alright again as I couldn't get it to fail again, I switched it off for the night.

This morning, it has failed to start both times I tried (Although after switching off and restarting it - it worked)

Any suggestions as to what this problem could be caused by?

Thanks in advance.

Paul

 

[micker377]

Sounds like the hard drive might be on the way out. In the old days we called it "stiction", the drive won't boot up when cold. I'm probably wrong, but I would do a back up just to be safe. I just had a Toshiba that the client had to pull the hard drive and push it back in when cold - would re-boot quickly once started.

 

[bcastner]

Check the battery. Even if on AC power, if the battery essentially will not hold a charge anymore you have to remove the battery to restart the machine.

 

[PMRiley]

Thanks to both of you!

Either (Or both!) could be correct on this one.

I know that the HDD is on its way out (Not too worried as this machine is only used for net surfing only these days!).

The battery is also a very likely suspect as the 'charge LED's' were not showing the usual full charge (Blinking two of the LED lights only) and I automatically replaced the battery with the spare that no longer holds a charge properly!

It looks like this laptop might not be on it's way to 'Silicon Heaven' after all!

Thanks again folks.