Dell Inspiron 3500 laptop

"inherited" this from my sister in law. computer doesn't boot at all. not from the hard drive, not from a cd. nothing. just hangs.

want to reformat and reinstall 98SE, but need to be able to get the computer to boot up.

any suggestions?
thanks

 

First thing is to check the BIOS if possible and revert all settings to default. There is usually one key you can press to do this; most BIOSes use F10, but Dell is famous for having totally different BIOSes so if you can poke around in the BIOS, look for the 'default settings' key. Try powering on without the battery; just run the laptop with the power cord plugged in and the battery removed. If that doesn't work, pop open the memory compartment and make sure the memory sticks are correctly seated. If there's 2 sticks, remove one, then the other and see if maybe one of 'em is bad. If you have access to known good memory, try it. If that doesn't work, remove the hard drive and see if you can boot to the CD. Of course, you won't be able to do much, but you'll know if the hard drive is responsible for the problem. Try the same thing but remove the CD drive and see if the PC will boot to the hard drive. This will tell you if the CD is bad. If none of this works, then you're kind of stuck....

Good luck!