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January 2nd, 2016 14:00

Dell Inspiron 1100 wont boot

I have a dell inspiron 1100 laptop, its a 2003-2005 model i believe, someone gave it to me and said it wont boot. The first thing i did was put a battery in it from a dell 5160 since it fit, and are the same, and i didn't have a charger for it and the fan and hard drive do turn on, but that's it. 

I took it all apart and cleaned it, and put on some new thermal paste, blew everything with compressed air, and the hard drive turns on and fan, but it will not boot. The screen will also not come on and i get 1 short beep, 3 normal beeps then one normal beep. I switched out the memory on it and that wasn't the problem, it had pc2100 in it i tried 2700, from the 5160 laptop and did the same thing. 

My guess is bad motherboard? Ive even tried hooking it to an external lcd and still no screen. If anyone could lead me in the right direction here id appreciate it, in all the years ive worked on laptops, computers etc. ive never had this problem. 

615 Posts

January 3rd, 2016 00:00

Since you've already had the machine apart. and back together....Is it safe to assume you are getting the same Beep series that you were getting before you put it back together?

A wide variety of odd problems arise as a result of failing of dead DDR.  Pull both sticks and inspect for any physical signs of water damage (trails or water / fluid marks) If that don't cure what ails ya, try inserting one stick at a time, if you find that one doesn't work, remove it and try the other, It may also be necessary to do this individually on each slot if you have to rule out a bad socket. If none of that works, I would also remove the CMOS battery and check it for voltage...BUT remember voltage doesn't necessarily guarantee current. The $3.00 spent on a CMOS coincell battery may be the fix....particularly in a laptop where the power on cycle and BIOS load depend on that cell.

January 4th, 2016 16:00

I will check the cmos battery, and before i took it apart it had a 3-3-1 code and according to something i found it is a nvram power loss, and now it is 1-3-1 sometimes just 3-1.

Then, after taking it all apart and i did try it with 1 ram module on both sides, and then switched them, then even tried pc2700 ones with no luck.

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