Motherboard fried?

kjnunweiler · May 25, 2011

I have a Dell Inspiron 1521 that I basically just used for writing research papers for school. As of lately it stopped powering up. I hit the power button, the fan and the drive both kick on and then about 3 seconds later everything shuts down. The screen never turns but the battery light flashes. I tried taking the battery off and just using the main power supply and it does the same thing. I pulled out both DIMM and switched them around, tried using one at a time, etc. and still nothing. Does this mean my motherboard is fried or do I just need to replace the DIMM cards?

TimW · May 25, 2011

Might be your power supply. Too hard to tell with little info. How old it is the machine?

kjnunweiler · May 25, 2011

I bought it brandnew in 2007 so it's fairly old. I know its not the power supply because the power supply works with other laptops no problem.

I'm thinking its time to just get a new laptop and stop trying to fix this one.

TimW · May 25, 2011

Since you have eliminated the power supply, you are left with either a failed Hard drive, bad ram or a fried motherboard.

kjnunweiler · May 25, 2011

Thank you so much for your quick response. I was just trying to confirm everything before I went out and spent a lot of money.

much appreciated

TimW · May 25, 2011

The cost to repair your system may be half of what you pay for a new one, but with a new one, you can get a much faster and higher capacity hard drive, as well as seeing if they will toss in copying your files and data off the old hard drive.

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Motherboard fried?

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TimW MajorGeeks Administrator - Jedi Malware Expert Staff Member

kjnunweiler Private E-2

TimW MajorGeeks Administrator - Jedi Malware Expert Staff Member

kjnunweiler Private E-2

TimW MajorGeeks Administrator - Jedi Malware Expert Staff Member