I've got a 6 or so year old Dell Inspiron 8500 that has apparently died. Everything has power, battery is charged, etc. But when I press the power button to turn it on, the 3 lights across the top come on (Num, Caps, Scroll), and the other power light. They stay on about 4 seconds, during which time the hard drive normally spins up followed by the display of various bios screens. Now I've got nothing but the lights and they just turn off after 4 or 5 seconds. I've taken the computer apart, reseated the processor, video card, hd, ram, wireless card, and modem. Also checked to make sure the display was connected securely. Nothing...

What's the next troubleshooting step I should take?

2/19/2009 5:08:46 PM

30 views, no replies? You're all useless.

2/20/2009 3:46:05 AM

most likely the motherboard is gone. my desktop mobo just died yesterday. It sometimes get to bios but then freezes..

[Edited on February 20, 2009 at 6:23 AM. Reason : .]

2/20/2009 6:21:51 AM

it's dead

you had 6 great years together

buy a new one

2/20/2009 7:56:19 AM

USER ERROR. REPLACE USER.

2/20/2009 8:00:11 AM

Quote :

"most likely the motherboard is gone. my desktop mobo just died yesterday. It sometimes get to bios but then freezes.. "

It seems like motherboards have been dying a lot lately. Mine died 2 weeks ago. I have heard that a couple people have lost their motherboards in the past couple of weeks.

2/20/2009 10:06:04 AM

It always happens in threes.


What happens when you enter the bios?

2/20/2009 12:30:05 PM

^Doesn't get that far. Just before this happened, it took it like 5 minutes to come back from hibernation. It loaded the data and sat at a black screen for most of the time. When the desktop finally appeared, nothing worked. Held down the power button to turn it off and it wouldn't come up anymore.

Hopefully this is the third... I had to get a new transmission, had a nice coat stolen, and now my laptop died.

[Edited on February 20, 2009 at 12:37 PM. Reason : threes]

[Edited on February 20, 2009 at 12:38 PM. Reason : I don't even think your post was directed to me. Oh well.]

2/20/2009 12:35:42 PM

Have you tried booting to knoppix or booting memtest+?

(Edit oh well, if you can't get to the bios screen I guess you can't boot from a disk?)

If that don't work... you tried jigglin' the cables?

[Edited on February 20, 2009 at 12:42 PM. Reason : ]

2/20/2009 12:38:26 PM

worst comes to worst, buy for yourself an IDE to USB converter (which i assume it's using, if it's 6 years old...though you could just buy one of those 3-in-1 units) and you can get the data off the drive

2/20/2009 2:10:23 PM

Yeah - I've got all my data on the desktop I built a while back, and I've got one of the little enclosures for laptop drives. I wish I would have just gotten the adapter that does several types though.

2/20/2009 3:13:18 PM