Oldie laptop issue

[Nevakonaza]

Hey,
Got given a retro laptop (Dell Inspiron 1300) ME051 Series.

The issue is when I power it on it just gets stuck on the Dell splash screen and the loading bar is quarter full and it doesn't move from there.

I'm talking about pre-boot here ,like I can't even press F12 or escape/ delete to get into the bios it just doesn't do anything.

I've tried removing the battery if that was causing the issue,I've tried it with no hard drive in (didn't come with one) none of this changed anything.
Even installing an IDE to Sata so there's a drive present still doesn't fix the issue.
So I'm not sure what's making it hang.

Appreciate any replies

 

[cokecan]

If it's hanging at pre-boot then it's most likely a hardware issue. Faulty RAM perhaps? If you've got two sticks of RAM in there, might be worth removing one and testing, then if it still hangs, swap the sticks over and re-test. Not sure if a faulty SSD might cause that unless the pre-boot is doing some kind of hardware check? I'd more expect the SSD to just not be detected period

 

[Philtor]

Can you get to the CMOS battery to pull it out and do a reset? Worth a try.