Inspiron One 20 Doesn't Display Anything

Ejn63 types faster than I do. :emotion-4:

When you removed/reinstalled that battery, did you insert it right-side-up and seat it correctly in the battery socket? You might want to check that before you buy a new battery, if you haven't already bought one.

Sounding like the motherboard died.  [:'(]

Five beeps means one of two things:

1.  A bad CMOS battery (also called the reserve battery).  If you haven't changed that, it would be the next thing to do.

If that doesn't solve the problem, and the five-beep sequence continues, it's a bad clock generator, meaning:

2.  The mainboard needs to be replaced (that component can't be replaced without micro-soldering, and while you might be able to find a shop that can replace it IF they can locate the part, it's likely to cost about what  or more than a replacement board would.

Replacing the battery is described in chapter 17 of the manual:

downloads.dell.com/.../inspiron-one-20-2020-aio_owner's manual_en-us.pdf

There is a metal leaf spring that holds the battery.  Push that aside and the battery should just pop out of the holder on its own.  You do not (and shouldn't) need to pull up  on the battery to release it.

OK, thanks ejn. Is it OK to try to power it on without replacing the back panel?

Be careful not to short anything, but it should be OK.

OK, I fully seated the battery, and the start up with repeated F2's gave the original response, i.e. the power light came on solid, the optical drive led flashed a few times, and the hard drive led came on solid for about 10 - 12 seconds and then went off. Continued tapping of the F2 caused the power to go off, but continued tapping caused the power to go back on again, with the same lights as before. This time I did NOT receive an audible beep so I guess I just hadn't fully seated the battery which caused a red herring. Sorry. Any further ideas or suggestions?

This would be the part to replace:

accessories.us.dell.com/.../productdetail.aspx

You do need thermal paste. Without it, the CPU will likely overheat. You can probably find thermal paste, eg Arctic Silver, on line for less than at BB.

There's a refurbished motherboard here for $145, so shop around. Just make sure it's the right one for your system (note the comment at that link). If you order from Dell, you may want to call Dell Spare Parts directly and give them your Service Tag and they should be to get the right board for your system. And ask about warranties, wherever you buy the board.

Don't know how ejn feels, but there's always a risk when you buy parts, such as motherboards, power supplies, etc, that they fix the problem. Only you can decide if it's worth the expense and risk, or whether to put that money toward a new PC...

BTW: Does your external power brick have an LED either on the brick itself or on the cord that plugs into the PC?

Does that LED go off or blink when the PC fails to boot after the optical and HDD LEDs stop blinking? That would suggest a power supply problem...

I, too, have a 'black screen'. but I have an inspiron 660s. I used it 2 days ago and everything was fine. today I came back to it and clicked a few times and pressed enter a few times and nothing happened. so I pressed the on/off button to shut down the system. then re-booted it. still a black screen. I noticed that there is a small light next to the on/off button that is blinking. not sure what it is all about. the on/off is solid white. wonder if it is some windows update is messing up the system. I have windows 10. I really don't want to go into the computer to do all the things that have been suggested in the following posts.

Minimum:  Unplug the system, disconnect the power plug and hold the power button for 30 seconds.  Remove and reinstall the memory modules.

If that doesn't get the system running, the next step is to replace the power supply.  

If that doesn't solve it, replace the mainboard.

this afternoon I still had a black screen but the little light beside the on/off button wasn't blinking when I pressed the space bar a few times. then I could hear the system come out of 'sleep' mode and the little light started blinking - still black screen. went away for a few hours and when I came back and did the space bar thing, the system came out of sleep and the screen came to life! after signing on to windows, I got a message that updates were installed. I guess it was several days of installing because of going into sleep mode which stopped the progress of the updates.

so.... my system is back running as it should. that is what 7 weeks of being away will get you! what a worry. hope your problems get fixed.

so.... my system is back running as it should.

Glad you got it sorted.

But next time, please don't jump into someone else's thread when you have a different PC model, even if the symptoms seem to be the same. The fix -as you've seen here- can be totally different. And what's recommended for one PC model and version of Windows may not work, or may even make things worse, on a different model.

Thanks.

Shequis-

Reading a thread about a different Inspiron AIO with a similar problem, that user eventually found that if he removed the motherboard battery completely, plugged the PC in and tapped F2 repeatedly, then unplugged, replugged, pressed F2, and did that cycle several times, he eventually got into BIOS setup.

Once in BIOS setup he set the boot sequence to USB first and was able to boot and reinstall Win (10) from the bootable USB stick. And then he reinstalled the battery and flashed BIOS to the latest version.

Doing that will wipe all your files off the hard drive, so you'd need to be backed up on external media. I wonder if you could boot from a bootable USB and just do the BIOS flash without reinstalling Windows first..?

Now obviously, I don't know if there's even a remote possibility that will work for your system, but worth a try before buying replacement parts...