Dell Inspiron 1420 - won't power up (only blue LEDs blink)

Question

I have a Dell Inspiron 1420 laptop purchased in 2008, with Core 2 Duo, 4 GB RAM and Windows 7. It's been extremely well treated and lightly used. Never had any issues with it before.Well, last night I attempted to turn on my laptop only to discovered it has spontaneously died. If I press the power button, there is NO activity from the fan, hardisk or screen. The only sign of life is the power LED on front lights solid up for 5 seconds, and then goes out. If I plug in the DC wall-charger, power LED lights up for 5 seconds, goes out, and then the battery LED blinks once every 10 seconds.Holding down 'FN' while pressing power results in more LEDs, the Bluetooth and caps/num/scroll-lock lighting up briefly. In otherwise, apart from a few LEDs lighting up, it is completely, and utterly dead.Tried the following...- Removed battery- Tried powering up with DC charger only (also tried a different charger)- Removed both memory DIMMs (also tried popping in a different DIMM from spare parts)- Removed DVD burner- Removed SATA hardisk- Removed WIFI card and modem card- Unplugged CMOS/clock battery- Removed and reseated CPU and heatsinkLikely a bunch of other stuff I'm forgetting, including giving it some dirty looks and cursing at it. Grrrr. If I've missed something, I'm opened to other suggestions though!The last thing I did with the laptop was leave it plugged in and charging the battery for several hours, while sitting idle at the Windows desktop. Then did a Windows shutdown. Did it overheat or something?At this point I assume the motherboard is at fault. Question is, WHAT kind of fault? Could it be GPU related, or some capacitor issue? Likely it's out of warranty and not worth the cost of replacing the motherboard, but I wonder if doing a reflow of the GPU with a heatgun might bring it back. Nothing to lose expect my time but thought I'd see if anyone else has experienced this issue.

DELL-Akshatha M · Answer

Hi 2gs,

Thank you for writing to Dell Community Forum.

We see that you have tried most of the doable steps.

Does the light on the charger stay on when it is plugged into the system?

Please private message us the service tag of the system in discussion.

Kindest Regards,
DELL-Akshatha M
Social Media and Community Professional
#IWork4Dell

2gs · Answer

Yes, the light on the charger stays on when plugged in (it is not the DC-input jack at fault, or charger; I get the same symptom with the fully charged battery).

Sent you my service tag.

I phoned in just now and was told there is no out of warranty support whatsoever. Dell will not repair it, nor can they sell me a replacement motherboard. In fact they cannot even advise me what the issue is, should I wish to repair it myself. Rather disappointed to say the least, hope you can be of more assistance than the phone support I just received.

Locked Topics – Laptops General

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