Member Avatar for adinelt

Good afternoon:

I have a Dell 5000e laptop that I purchased used off eBay. It was pretty much a stripped down laptop. I bought a new Dell power supply (correct PA-6 model) for the laptop and 128 MByte RAM to see if it would work or not.

When I turn on the laptop, the green power light on the laptop lights up. The fan starts spinning and then after a second or two, the fan stops and nothing else happens. The green power light is still lit up on the laptop.

Pressing the power switch has no effect after it shuts down. I have to unplug the laptop, then plug it back in again for the power switch to work again.

I took the laptop apart and reseated everything. It was clean inside and did not see anything out of the ordinary with it.

Any ideas or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance...
Al

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Member Avatar for dcc

Never has the phrase caveat emptor been more applicable than with good ole ebay.

Member Avatar for adinelt

Never has the phrase caveat emptor been more applicable than with good ole ebay.

Thank you for the reply, but that doesn't help much. I didn't pay much for it and it is a project for my son and I to work on together. You know, take it apart, see what makes it tick, can we get it working. It is a learning experience for him before he starts taking apart more expensive laptops.

Does anyone else have any suggestions?

Thanks...
Al

Member Avatar for dcc

If the CPU is over heating it would shut down the computer and not turn back on until the temperature drops back down below the preset cut off temperature.

Member Avatar for DellOutreach

First, if you haven't already found it you can get the service manual for the system on the Dell support website (http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/pblan/).

Normally, from what you describe, the first thing I would recommend for an Inspiron 5000 would be to check and make sure none of the screws on the bottom are missing or lose. They don't need to be tight, just snug. I have seen one or two screws half to a quarter turn lose causing very strange behavior with the older Dell notebooks. Since you have already taken it apart and put it back together, however, I don't think this will fix it.

The next step would be to remove all of the customer removable parts (media bay device, batter, hard drive, memory, miniPCI modem/network card, PCMCIA cards (if present) and any external devices connected) and see what happens when you try to power it on. With the memory out the lock LEDs (num-/caps-/scroll-lock) should show an error: flashing 5-1-2, 1-0-1 (on-off-on), 0-1-0 or solid 0-1-1. If you get a different error (combination of lock lights) let me know what they are and I will look it up for you.

Assuming you get the error above, the next step is to start putting peices back into the computer one at a time and powering up to see what happens. Once the memory is in the system should complete the Power On Self Test (POST) and say, "No bootable device found" (no hard drive or bootable disk). If you get anything else then the problem is either the memory, motherboard or processor. Otherwise, put parts in until the problem returns and from that you should be able to identify what part is causing the trouble.

Even though the system is most likely out of warranty I would still recommend filling out the transfer of ownership form in case you needed to call into Dell support on it for some reason. If it is still in warranty, the transfer of ownership allows you to make use of what warranty is left. I can get you the link for the form if you need it.

If you have any questions on the system I will be more than happy to answer them.


Larry
Dell Customer Advocate

Member Avatar for snowmax

hi there... the kid upstairs brought me his TOSHIBA TE 2000 that was freezing from the very start of the booting process. After trying everything that i knew (just an amateur i'm!) i got to your website and registered and found an interesting thing that you first mentionned about troubleshooting a dead computer. Checking the screws underneath....!!! And that was it! The one holding the motherboard was slightly loose.
It makes me appreciate my IBM X31 even more....
Thank you SO MUCH for sharing your time and your science....
Max

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