Hello...first post here. I should preface this by admitting I am just a regular layperson who really knows very little about computers. Also I did post this in the "Trouble Shooting Dead Machines" but haven't had a response yet. Last night I was using my laptop and it suddenly went completely dead. Black screen, no indicator lights would come on, unable to repower, was 85% charged and plugged in. No warning at all. The machine has always been very reliable with very little problems. It is an approximately 1 year old Dell E1505 Laptop with 1 GB ram, Inspiron I6400, Intel Core 2 CPU T5500 1.66 GHz, Windows XP.
I thought perhaps it had overheated as I had it on my lap and it was a bit warm but seemed unlikely. Let it set overnight plugged in...still no indicator light to indicate it was charging at all. Then this morning, I told my husband what happened and it was still dead until he took out the battery and put it back in. Since then its been working fine. But...I have a programmer friend who tries to help me with questions and he has me concerned because he seemed to think the BIOS is going bad. I really have very little idea what this means. He told me to back up any important files (which I have done) and be ready to buy a new lap top because he felt this one was on its way out soon. My husband who is only very mildly tech minded wonders if there is someway to make adjustments to BIOS to correct. Basically, we are wondering if this is something that Fire Dog, Geek Squad, etc can tweek and salvage the lap top. Should we just play the wait and see game since the machine has been running perfectly now for 2 hours? Would battery replacement help?
Please help me save my laptop. I will be very lost without it.
Thank you for any help in advance!
