Inspiron 1521 failed. Why?

I have a Dell Inspiron 1521 with 2 GB RAM, 160 GB HD, AMD duo core processor that is 4 years old. Last night, I was playing a game, and the screen went all fuzzy then went to a set of vertical lines alternating red and black. I couldn't get it to respond, and so I powered it off with the power button. When I tried to re-boot, it does not do anything. The blue power light comes on, and nothing else happens. I can hear the fan spinning, and what sounds like it could be the harddrive spinning, but it was always pretty quite, so I can be sure.

I took the drive out, and attached it to my desktop computer and tried to boot my desktop. It told me there had been an error and wanted boot in safe mode. Tried that, no response. I could feel the drive spinning while it was on my desktop, but it kept telling me the system had changed and it couldn't boot.

I tried to power on the laptop without the drive, and got the exact same response, blue power light and nothing else. No BIOS screen or anything.

The system is running Windows 7 professional, 32-bit, if that makes a difference.

Any advice would be appreciated. I would consider putting a new drive if that is the problem, but if it is more serious, I would just scrap the laptop at this point. So, any insight into troubleshooting would be greatly appreciated.

 

The system did change as Dell laptops have proprietary drivers which probably won't work on your desktop. It does sound like the drive is OK, no clicking I assume? Sounds more like your graphics chip went to heaven especially since you were stressing it with a game at the time. Take your pick, could be either of those two or something else. Except for the drive, everything else would be expensive to fix.

 

OK, I have a big update to my situation. I determined I could hook my laptop harddrive to my desktop as a slave drive and read it. I am currently backing up everything (it has been a few months, so fortunately I won't lose any data).

So, it is definitely not a harddrive issue. I guess it could be the video card, or the motherboard. Either way, I don't know if it is worth fixing at this point. Suggestions about how I could tell which it is, as the video card may be a cheap enough fix to merit a replacement, but the motherboard is definitely too much to spend.

 

You could try one other thing and connect the laptop to an external monitor and hit the Fn key and the F# eky with the two monitors icon(to switch to external monitor mode) and see if you get anything such as the Dell screen. That would rule out a laptop screen problem. (It is most likely graphics chip with your symptoms but a screen/inverter is cheaper to fix).

 

Sorry about that but the ATI RADEON Xpress1270 HyperMemory is a video chip on your motherboard, if it is socketed(which I doubt) then it's an easy replacement, otherwise you have a doorstop.

I hope some else can chime in here.

 

Tried the external monitor, nothing but a black screen though. It doesn't go to POST, or the Bios screen even. It just spins the fan, and assumably the harddrive and nothing else.

 

It seems the chip has gone bad and that means a motherboard replacement. Probably not worth the money.