No it's not a Dell, Fujitsu-Siemens actually.

95% of the time you press the power button and the fans spin up to maximum, 
but that's all (no display, no VGA output, no beeps, no hard drive spin-up, 
nothing).   It will turn off if you hold down the power button for 5 
seconds, so something is working.

5% of the time it will boot normally (the fans immediately go to low power 
mode once the BIOS screen appears).  However if you gently tap the computer 
it immediately turns off and goes back to the 95% behaviour.

I tried taking out the RAM, but same as above, except for the 5% of the time 
it will give a beepy error code (I assume for "no RAM").

I've already taken this one apart before to re-solder the AC socket (a long 
time ago), so I was planning to open it up again and check all connectors. 
I suspect it could be the CPU, I have no idea how these are attached to the 
main-board in laptops but I'll see if I can re-seat it or something.

Any other ideas while I have it open tonight?  Does the 95% behaviour sound 
like what happens if you try to boot with no CPU?

Post a reply to this message