I have a Dell Inspiron 5100, it died some time ago, and i replaced it, however I would like to get it running again for my son. This is whats going on and what I have done to try and repair it.
Turn it on, you can hear it working, but nothing at all on the screen, no visual at all. Can not get bios, nothing.
Thought ok, screen has gone. No, plugged into second monitor, pressing "FN" and "F8" (to switch to second monitor source" nothing on either screen. - interesting.
Did Dell online diagnostic, comes up with beep codes 1 4 6. This means HDD has previous errors. My thing is I dont want to replace the hdd, then find, way more other things that have gone bung. Not unless this all makes sense, that the hdd being faulty would loose the screen too. I didnt think so, as bios should still be accessable, well I think so anyway. on the subejct of hdd, happy to replace it, however my experience is with desktops, i have not seen this type of drive, it is a segate momentos,k but it has a weird tab thing at the bottom. - kinda looks like ide built into the bottom of the drive..... I will go buy one, but any idea what the "type" of drive this is. Also would want to upgrade froma 40gb to max, cant find the info for that anywhere, max ram is 1gb, found that but not hdd. Is it limitless? I didnt think so?
I have taken ram out and back in, as suggested on other forum, and taken battery out and in etc. all the simple stuff. Needless to say, no change.
I have checked the ribbon cable for the screen, all looks fine to me, no creases etc.
Runs Xp Home, if i remember right, cannot find any discs on it at all - so that just compounds my problems.....
Appreciate your time, thanks for reading my leangthly post, hey I am a chic - you didnt expect short and sweet did ya!