Issue with a Dell Studio 1745

[theukmoog]

My brother had asked me to fix his laptop but I'm stumped

It's a 3y old (3y warranty expired 2 weeks ago, wouldn't you know!) Dell Studio 1745 and the symptoms are:

when you open the screen it should boot up but over the last week or so it has become unreliable - sometimes you'd see the BIOS then it would shut down. It might take 3 or 4 attempts to get it to actually boot into Windows;

it now does not even seem to power up - you plug the PSU in (which would appear to be OK as the blue ring around the laptop plug is alight) a small light next to the power socket on the laptop flashes white three times but nothing else. I can't hear the HDD or any fans firing up, no activity at all. This happens whether the battery is installed or not.

I've googled the symptoms but get confusing results from "reseat the CPU" to "replace the battery"!

On the battery front, it appears to have some LEDs on the underneath of the battery which I would have thought would indicate charge state but these never appear to light up.

Any ideas?

 

[Llamaman]

The light flashing 3 times would appear to be an error code - do you have the manual as it may be listed there?

I don't think you can be certain whether it's a dead battery or unseated CPU from the info so far - the mobo won't post without a CPU so either will result in an unresponsive computer.
If I was a betting man, I'd guess at a dead battery - purely because unseating a CPU would be quite difficult!

 

[theukmoog]

I've checked the manuals on the Dell site and all they say about the power light is:

Battery status light

Turns on steadily or blinks to indicate the battery charge status.
The lightindicates the following states when the computer is powered by

the AC adapter:
Solid white – the battery is adequately charged.
Solid amber – the battery charge is low and the battery is charging.

the battery:
Off – the battery is adequately charged or the computer is turned off.
Solid amber – the battery charge is low.
Blinking amber – the battery charge is critically low and you should either plug in the AC adapter or save and close your open documents and applications.

I can get nothing out of the laptop except these 3 flashes, with either the battery in or out.

With it being out of warranty, I'm sure Dell will want paying to advise on this