help technical issue with my laptop

It could be the power supply but my guess would be more along the lines of hard drive failure.

Can you hear the hard drive spin up? Can you hear, feel or see the fan running?

You can pick up a new HDD from newegg.com at pretty reasonable prices and they aren't that hard to swap out.

If it was the hard drive would I not have access to the Bios at all?

I do not at this time. I hear nothing starting up when I press the power button. no fan no nothing

Using myself as an example, if you really aren't used to opening up the comuter and doing repairs it is probably best to take it to a reliable repair shop.  I do minor things like change memory or a dead CD/DVD drive and clean out dust bunnies.  The rest of the stuff I let someone who knows what they are doing look at it.  The way I look at it, I could very well break more  things then what needs to be fixed.

Is the laptop still under warranty?

it might be the ram contacts having oxidized, the quick fix is to first turn off the computer, remove the battery and power cord, open the ram cover unclip the ram remove them, then replace and clip the ram back in, then re-install the batery & plug the power in  & try switching on.

if this does not help then it looks a lot more expensive.

harpo

You should still have access to the BIOS and the laptop should try to do 'something' even if the hard drive is out.

My guess is a power-related issue. Have you contacted Dell support?

Well since my warranty is out all I have access to it seems is the community and that is also down.

I am not overly happy with dell customer service right now. But then again maybe it's just me not knowing where to look.

No bios could be a dead cmos battery or none installed.....not unheard of by Dell.

The last time it worked did you install/uninstall/update any software/hardware or change/flash any bios settings?

Try pushing the power button for 10+ seconds.

actually this. had it happen

if there's faulty contact then you won't get bios.

it's a bugger of a problem first time (cos i know how you freaked ;-)) but thankfully it's an easy fix.

cmos battery... how interesting.

I guess the only thing I can do is get an expert to look at it. Most places ask 60$ just to diagnose the problem.

Take battery out, plug in power supply. Boot

Yeah I tried that and still get the same problem.

Thanks for the input though

solam, had you tried the remove ram, re-install ram?

harpo

Then it does sound like a more serious problem.

First off, what model Dell is this?

You can remove power supply and battery for five minutes and then put them back and try a boot.

If you have two memory sticks, re-seat one and leave the other out. If you only have one, re-seat it and try a boot. 

If you can find another compatiable power supply try it (battery in and out).

Failing that, it's the CPU or motherboard (the latter is the more likely). If that's the case (depending on the model), deep six it. 

no no no!!!!

not just the CMOS, you'll also have to resit the RAM.

take it out, perform the classic cartridge blow on the socket (just for luck) then put the ram back in!

bios doesn't boot unless it can sense ram.

Ok no I did not try the ram.

Never did that on a laptop before. I guess it's something simple to do I  just have to remove the bottom half and remove the stick?

Model is a dell Studio 1735

I opened the back of my laptop and the ram is evedient two sticks on over the other. However I am not sure how to remove it...

I would not throw that model away. I assume you threw the manual away......

Memory re-seat:

Spread the securing clips at either side of the memory module until it pops up.

Remove by sliding it backwards from the slot at a 45-degree angle.

Align the notch in the bottom of the RAM module with the tab in the connector slot.

Slide the module into the slot at a 45-degree angle.

Rotate the module downward until the securing clips click into place

Thanks for the info I will try that out in the morning.

Thanks all

I work in Walmart's Homeoffice IT and we have a lot of Dell laptops. When you turn on the laptop does the battery light stay orange or blink on and off orange? If so it is the battery even if the indicator on the battery shows it is fully charged. We have the same problems with all our model laptop batteries doing that. If you leave the battery in and also leave it plugged in it will eventually render the battery useless. The old saying we have at work is use the battery or lose it. You should use the battery until you get to about 20% then plug it in to charge it up. If you leave it plugged in all the time then remove the battery. The only problem with that is if you are working on something and you have a power surge or power interruption it will not save your project so do frequent saves. Hope this helps?

I had that problem with the battery once with the orange light and blinking but in this case it's not that.

The power button turns on but it never boots. The bios does not turn on.

If it's powered on but not posting the BIOS, it sounds like it may be a faulty stick of RAM, if re-seats have not eliminated the cause.  Have you tried removing the RAM and rebooting with known good stick from elsewhere???  If RAM is the culprit this would tell you straight away... new RAM is needed.

Ok, I don't think at this point that it would be the power adapter. If your drive is unencrypted then I would suggest you use a utility that I use called ActiveBoot Disk, from www.ntfs.com. Boot using this software and run a chkdsk /r. It should run a 5 stage test if it runs a 3 stage then most likely not your hard drive but if a 5 sdtage then keep an eye out for errors on the disk. If there are errors found then the chkdsk /r should correct the file system errors, especially bitmap sectors. Also if you see that chkdsk found bad blocks but repaired them this is okay, for a while but this is an indication that the hard drive is failing and replacement is imminent. A black screen may be the hard drive. As starkers noted above, bad RAM can also be the culprit and cause a black screen. Hope this helps?   

A black screen could also be a video card issue.

So here is what I did,

I removed the harddis the ram the cmos battery and made at the necessary test. I have two sticks of ram and both wont boot. My hard disk is fine tried it on another laptop.

Now the laptop won't even turn on anymore meaning that the power button does not even turn on. The bat is good I tried it on another laptop.

I seach the web a bit and I read that it's possible that there is a power jack that connect the power to the mother board. Just wondering if anybody ever heard of such a thing.

Thanks for any help.

PS I went to futureshop to have the laptop evaluated and they refused to test it saying that it's a dell and they won't touch it unless I bought it there. That's a lot of help to fix a laptop thanks a lot futureshop!