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Inspiron One 20 Doesn't Display Anything
I have an Inspiron One 20 with a totally black screen. The pc is getting power and I can hear the hard drive when I first turn it on. The power button and hard drive led are lighted, but the screen remains totally black. How can I figure out if it's just the display, or if the computer has totally died? Is there any way on this all-in-one to port the display to another monitor? Would appreciate any help.
shelquis
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August 29th, 2016 20:00
Hi RoHe. Thanks for the suggestion. I don't have a bootable USB but I do have a repair disk that I created when I upgraded from Win 8 to Win 10. Would that be just as good? And I do NOT have a recent backup, so I'd rather not reinstall Win 10 right now. If the hard drive is still good, could I pull it out of the AIO and put it in a tower as a second drive, back up the contents, then reinstall the hard drive in the AIO and then reinstall Win 10 using the repair disk?
Can you send me a link to the other thread you referenced?
BTW, you had asked about the power supply. I checked and the blue ring around the plug stays fully lighted whenever the AC plug is plugged in, so I don't think it's a power supply issue.
RoHe
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August 30th, 2016 11:00
The key is whether removing the battery and doing the F2 routine will get you into BIOS or not. If it gets you there, then I don't think it matters what you set as the first boot device.
And you could then just boot from a bootable USB stick with the BIOS flash update file on it and see if you can update/repair BIOS (probably with the battery reinstalled).
You might need a tray to install this HDD as a secondary in another PC, depending on the size of the HDD. Or you could put the drive in an external drive housing which connects to another PC via USB.
Link to that other thread.
shelquis
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August 31st, 2016 09:00
Hi RoHe. I wasn't able to get into bios using the dellleonard trick (F2 with the cmos battery out, power cycling between attempts). So now I guess I'm faced with the decision of whether to attempt repair, or not.
ejn felt my problem was likely a bad motherboard, later you said you said "it's possible the screen's backlight or the motherboard failed, and I'd add video card to those two suspects". You didn't seem nearly as confident that it was the motherboard.
It looks like I can find a refurbished motherboard for less than $200, and they even have return policies that would allow me to return it if it doesn't solve my problem. Replacement of the motherboard seems fairly straightforward and I'd be willing to take that on. I haven't explored how expensive or replaceable the screen's backlight or video card are.
Do you have any suggestions on how I'd best proceed from here?
BTW, the HDD seems to be a standard 3.5 inch drive, so shouldn't it just plug into the end of the cable that is plugged into the current HDD in my primary desktop?
RoHe
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August 31st, 2016 11:00
It's hard to know for certain if it's the motherboard or an LCD/video issue. Since the power button is on and not blinking and the HDD LED blinks when you power on, all that suggests it may actually be trying to boot but there's no video output because the LCD or video card failed.
If the LCD backlight failed, you probably have to replace the whole LCD panel. The video card is probably hardwired to the motherboard, so it would probably be more cost-effective to replace the entire motherboard.
Only you can decide the best way to proceed. Maybe you want to take it to a reliable PC shop that can diagnose motherboard vs LCD/video problems.
Keep in mind you can't simply install this HDD in place of the existing HDD in your desktop. The desktop won't boot from the AIO HDD. You have to install the AIO HDD as a secondary drive by connecting it to an empty SATA port on the desktop motherboard. Then boot the desktop normally from its own HDD to access your files on the other drive.