I walked into the scrapyard today an hour before closing and didn't hesitate to grab this one and with the adapter. Got home plugged it in, turned it on and it powered up and stayed on but the screen stays black. Any ideas or steps I should take to figure out it's issue? It doesn't turn on without being plugged in so I know the battery may need replacing, the light also blinks while plugged in. On the cd drive the light turns on and off even when the drive is open and when it's closed with no disc you can hear the drive either spinning on and off or the eye moving back and forth. I do not have monitor to hook it up to to test and see if its the screen or graphics card. Any info or ideas will help. I will be in the house for a day or two, were looking to get 6"-10" of snow tonight!
Take the brightest flashlight you have and shine it at the screen to see if there's even a faint image. If there is, the problem is likely with the display assembly. If not, it's likely the video card.
This is a pre-Dell system built by Clevo -- it won't have the usual Dell diagnostic tools aboard.
You may want to see about borrowing a monitor to attempt to display an image that way.
I tried to hook it uo to a separate monitor and still nothing. I also plugged in another working screen to check and see if the screen itself was bad and still a black screen. So I'm guessing video card now. Are they hard to replace?
Likely not, since Clevo systems are generally among the easiest to work on - usually removing the bottom cover is all that's required (it is on mine).
That said, these aren't the now-standard MXM cards -- you may have a hunt on your hands. Before buying a card, I'd remove and thoroughly clean inside, reseating the existing card.
There is some information linked below for possible options. How many of these have survived a decade of hard use as gaming cards is open to question.
Hey man whatever happened with this? Im trying to get a parts unit to repair the one i was given as a kid. if you stilll have it and any interest in letting it go. let me know! not so easy to come across these units!
U2CAMEB4ME
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Posted February 16th, 2021 02:00
Welcome to the Dell Community
Hold down the “ D “ key and power-on.
The laptop should go through an LCD test of solid White, Red, Green, Blue and Black 2 or 3 times.
After completion it should try to automatically boot 2-3 times.
Post your results.
Best regards,
U2
NOTE:
What is the exact model number???