It seems that we have almost the similar problem. The only difference that I get "logo" screen.
What did you do to the machine berofe it happend?

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@zac1333 wrote:
My Inspiron 8000 is acting strange. When I press the power button on the computer, the power comes on and the CAPS Lock and Scroll Lock lights stay lit while the Num Lock light does not come on at all. Then after about 5 seconds of being on and nothing showing up on the screen, it simply powers itself off. I have tried reseating the memory and hard drive as well as removed all PCMCIA cards and optical devices, and still get the same result. Any thoughts? Thanks.

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Nothing out of the ordinary other than just daily use.

Could this be another instance of an overheating issue?  A lot of Inspiron users (includeing myself recently) had problems with Inspiron machines shutting down after extensive CPU usage.  If you have had your machine for a while and have not cleaned the heatsink recently then that may be the problem.  Here's a useful link:

http://forums.us.dell.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=insp_general&message.id=146324&highlight=5100+overheating+solution#M146324

-Max 

 

 

thanks for the links, but my computer never starts any more.

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@maxfrenkel wrote:

Could this be another instance of an overheating issue?

Probably a bad system board or CPU.

looks like memory problem. try another dimm module or reseat yours or try start up the computer while pushing dimm bit harder (if you touch black surface of the chips it's okay nothing will short circuit).

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@zac1333 wrote:
the power comes on and the CAPS Lock and Scroll Lock lights stay lit while the Num Lock light does not come on at all.

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Here's the overheating link again:

http://forums.us.dell.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=insp_general&message.id=146324&highlight=5100+overheating+solution#M146324

if it does not work, try searching for overheating in the forum, there is a slew of messages on the issue, it is so common.  I am not sure that your case fits the description, most cases could boot the machine and use it for a while before it shut off by itself due to high CPU temperature.  Hope I helped.

-Max

 

 

 

I'm having the same exact problem with an Inspiron 8000 that someone brought to me to look into.  It's just over 3 years old (and just out of its warranty period).  I reseated the following components:

• All drives (hard drive, floppy drive, CD drive) and battery pack
• mini PCI card (modem)
• memory DIMM (it has just one)

After doing this, the laptop booted once, but then wouldn't boot again.  It would just come on for about one second then shut off--no display or anything.  I then reseated everything above again, but this time it still wouldn't come on.  Then I reseated everything above in addition to:

• keyboard (which I needed to remove to get to the rest)
• processor heat sink and the processor itself
• video card

Now the laptop seems to be working fine.  We'll see how long this lasts.

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@mrvaughn wrote:

I'm having the same exact problem with an Inspiron 8000 that someone brought to me to look into.  It's just over 3 years old (and just out of its warranty period).  I reseated the following components:

• All drives (hard drive, floppy drive, CD drive) and battery pack
• mini PCI card (modem)
• memory DIMM (it has just one)

After doing this, the laptop booted once, but then wouldn't boot again.  It would just come on for about one second then shut off--no display or anything.  I then reseated everything above again, but this time it still wouldn't come on.  Then I reseated everything above in addition to:

• keyboard (which I needed to remove to get to the rest)
• processor heat sink and the processor itself
• video card

Now the laptop seems to be working fine.  We'll see how long this lasts.

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I tried all of that and still have the same result.  Does anyone have a link to where I can see what those two lights staying on mean?  Thanks.

i had the same lights sequence when one of the dimms had bad contact in the memory bay.