Computer help

Factual Questions
1

Ok, since there is litteraly NO tech help available until monday, I’m turning to the Dope for help.

My trusty Dell Inspiron 9400 (heir to his ill-fated namesake, who expired in a cofee-related accident last year) just died on me. It simply will not turn on.

I press the power-button, and istantly, lights spring up on the keyboard, and then nothing. The three little “padlocks” on the left hand top of the keyboard are lit upp, the one with a 9 inside glows steadily, the one with an A and the one with a down arrow are blinking.

This came litteraly out of the blue. One minute it’s fine, the next, this. Anyone have any ideas? Wait untill it’s cold? Exorsism? Play it a love song?

(Oh, and I’m a computer illiterate, as should be no surprise to anyone. Small words, please.)

2

[QUOTE=Septima]
The three little “padlocks” on the left hand top of the keyboard are lit upp, the one with a 9 inside glows steadily, the one with an A and the one with a down arrow are blinking.

(Oh, and I’m a computer illiterate, as should be no surprise to anyone. Small words, please.)
[/QUOTE]

The first of those is your number lock indicator, the second is caps lock, the third is scroll lock. I’m guessing the fact that they are blinking is supposed to be telling you something. Try searching the Dell support site.

3

Ok, maybe those things aren’t relevant. I have a black screen, stuff is blinking, that’s all I know.

4

Is it plugged in? Is it possible that the power cord has become disconnected and the battery has discharged?

5

Things that blink when the computer malfunctions are often designed to blink in a certain way and your symptom of one holding steady while the other two blink strongly suggests an error code. Did you search and didn’t find anything?

6

[QUOTE=Septima]
My trusty Dell Inspiron 9400 (heir to his ill-fated namesake, who expired in a cofee-related accident last year) just died on me. It simply will not turn on.
[/QUOTE]

My first intuitive hunch was that the battery is low. Do you have it plugged in to AC power? As I remember (I used to own an Inspiron) the AC power brick has a little LED that shows whether it’s plugged in or not. You may also see a little LED on the notebook that shows that it’s charging.

If that’s not the problem, then think back to the last time it was working. What happened between then and now? Did you do anything at all different? From what you’ve written, all I can tell is that it won’t boot, but surely something else was going on before that. Clearly it was off, you tried to turn it on, nothing happened. Even knowing the last time it was on and where you had it sitting when it was off would help.

7

Ok, an update.

First, a big thanks to all who took the time to try and help me.

So, something seems to be wrong with the hardware, according to Friendly Neighbourhood Tech-Support Guy. It’s still new, so they’ll fix it for me, I’ll just take it in and have them replace the faulty part. Probabaly some fabrication error.

[QUOTE=Contrapuntal]
Is it plugged in? Is it possible that the power cord has become disconnected and the battery has discharged?
[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=633squadron]
My first intuitive hunch was that the battery is low. Do you have it plugged in to AC power? As I remember (I used to own an Inspiron) the AC power brick has a little LED that shows whether it’s plugged in or not. You may also see a little LED on the notebook that shows that it’s charging.
[/QUOTE]

Plugged inn, battery full. Tried unplugging out the cord/ taking out the battery several times to see if anything changed. Nope (exept the light that says it’s on battery went on/off at appropriate times, so the electrical stuff seems to be fine).

[QUOTE=633squadron]
If that’s not the problem, then think back to the last time it was working. What happened between then and now? Did you do anything at all different? From what you’ve written, all I can tell is that it won’t boot, but surely something else was going on before that. Clearly it was off, you tried to turn it on, nothing happened. Even knowing the last time it was on and where you had it sitting when it was off would help.
[/QUOTE]

That’s the weird part. It was sitting on the desk, doing fine. I was fiddling with something else, so didn’t think much of it when the screen went black, since it does that when it’s been idle for a while (to save power, I guess). I didn’t notice anything wrong, til I tried to turn it back on.

No error message, no beep, no nothing. Just black screen.

8

[QUOTE=Septima]
That’s the weird part. It was sitting on the desk, doing fine. I was fiddling with something else, so didn’t think much of it when the screen went black, since it does that when it’s been idle for a while (to save power, I guess). I didn’t notice anything wrong, til I tried to turn it back on.
[/QUOTE]

My laptop did something very similar. Screen saver kicked in while I was doing something else for a little bit, and when I came back to it and woke it up, the screen when solid white. Bummer.

9

Dell sucks. I have an Inspiron 3900 laying around that I haven’t gotten rid of yet. The hard drive connector is faulty and sometimes comes loose. When this happens the computer does not start, with similar symptoms to what yours has. On mine, you can remove and reinsert the hard drive by removing a small screw on the underside of the case and sliding the HD out. I don’t know if yours is that easy to access.

The POS also has other problems, hence the laying around unused part. The only reason it hasn’t been taken out back and run over with a car is because my wife hasn’t gotten around to copying off whatever files she might want to keep. After that I need to wipe it and then run it over.

10

On the off chance - Try holding the power button down for 10 seconds. This will make sure that the machine is off. Plug in the AC power, then start the laptop like normal. Sometimes the Sleep Mode engages, and won’t disengage. ITs maybe a 5% chance… but what the heck.

11

This sounds like a hardware issue to me. You didn’t mention any beep codes so I’ll assume there aren’t any. Blinking “lock” LEDs isn’t a good sign. Not booting even the BIOS is a bad sign.

It sounds like you’ve removed all power during your troubleshooting. If this is the case we can rule out being stuck in a troublesome sleep or hibernate mode.

I’m going to guess there is a power issue to the motherboard or a dead element like video, CPU, etc, which CAN cause the system to act like this (which would prevent the hard drive from spinning - have a listen. I bet you don’t hear it.)

If this is the case, the good news is your hard drive has a pretty good chance of being ok. If you need to recover any files, there is a good chance you can get them.

That said, just going by what you’ve said, it is really hard to troubleshoot.