Dell laptop boot problems, help?

Discussion in 'Hardware' started by shimooka, Nov 24, 2005.

  1. shimooka

    shimooka Private E-2

    I have a Dell Inspiron 600m laptop that I bought about 2.5 years ago. Recently, it had gradually been having problems freezing up or bluescreening, sometimes on start up. So I thought it was a software issue and reinstalled Windows XP Home edition, and formatted completely the hard drive. (On boot up, I pressed F3 and reinstalled Windows from the CD). However, the problem is still occurring. Here is a detailed description of the problem:

    Sometimes when I try to turn it on, a few lights start blinking but nothing happens. There are 4 lights on the upper left of the machine (1 shows a power icon, 2 shows a cylinder that must be to show when the hard drive is working, 3 is the battery, and 4 is some squiggly line that I don't know what it means.) Anyway, they turn on initially, then the 3 lights at the top of the keyboard (1 for number lock, 2 for caps lock, and 3 for keyboard lock?) start blinking and then all lights turn off. Nothing else happens, the fan never turns on, the screen does not turn on, I don't hear the hard drive turn on or anything. I've sat there and pressed the power button numerous times and it does this every time. Then if I pick up the laptop and tap it lightly on the table, it might boot up correctly. This could just be my imagination.

    On other occasions, the computer turns on and the screen turns on, but remains black. Still other occasions it goes through part of the process of booting up (shows the "initializing Windows" screen) but then freezes up. And this is AFTER I've reformatted everything and reinstalled Windows. There are NO other programs installed.

    Any ideas?
     
  2. brownizs

    brownizs MajorGeek

    It is possible the hard drive has failed. The flashing of the lights is actually the POST sequence.
     

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