Is my laptop busted?

AWBbox · 30 Nov 2008 at 08:47

I have had a Dell D505 for around 5 years now and it's been very stable all that time, up until this morning that is. I was using it to browse the web and all of a sudden it turned off. I haven't been able to power it on since, it has full battery and charges fine off the power adaptor. When I press the 'on' button, the power and HDD LED's will blink, but nothing more. Can any of you please give me advise? Or is my laptop broken for ever?

nightmare99 · 30 Nov 2008 at 10:59

Try it without the battery plugged in.

5 years is a really good innings for a laptop.

4T5 · 30 Nov 2008 at 11:05

It could be just the backlight that has gone, Plug it in to an external monitor to test.
If not it is probably clogged with dust from 5 years use & has overheated & shut itself down/cooked itself, Hopefully the former.

AWBbox · 30 Nov 2008 at 12:03

Thanks for the replies guys, but unfortunately I am still having no joy with it. There is no output from the VGA, and I have waited for it to cool down. I fear it has gone the way of the dodo

AtreuS · 1 Dec 2008 at 15:32

Try taking the ram out and cleaning+ reseating it, it could have some crud build up on the pins.

Flukester · 1 Dec 2008 at 21:08

hate to say it sounds kaput

...laptops seem to get a lot of mechanical problems, mainly with the power socket which can be easily fixed. But bar reseating ram as said etc when the motherboard can't power up it's terminal. (though I've seen ribbon cable connectors in back of LCD come out before.)

if it's a old machine as you say don't take it to some repair place, just not worth it with the current price of new machines so low..

before skipping it remove everything you can, battery, hdd, cd (if possible), reseat memory.. thats all thats really worth trying and unless you are very good with electronics, not worth really stripping further (fuses on these things are PCB mounted and require some skill to change if blown). You could also measure output voltage on PSU if you have a meter.