I have a dead 1150 Inspiron laptop. No lights on laptop at all. I have another laptop same model. swapped power supply, processor, hard drive, with no luck. None of the swaps I performed would give lights to the dead laptop. The "dead" power supply would give momentary lights to the good laptop but not power it up. the good power supply would not power the dead system. I have previously removed the processor and applied new thermal grease...no improvement. I am suspecting the connector on the dead system. Any comments would be appreciated. I also would like to know how to open up the bottom of the case.

1: Your issue probably isn't the power adapter. It's probably dead, mind you, but you're probably looking at a motherboard replacement. Here's what you need to do: Pull the memory, MiniPCI cards, optical drive, and hard drive. Use a known-good AC adapter, and see what happens then. If nothing happens, then you're looking at a bad motherboard or CPU. If you're calling Dell Spare parts, I'd shoot for a processor and a motherboard, and replace them both if you're going in there.

2: The "bottom" of the laptop "is" the laptop. There's nothing too interesting under there. There's like, a fan, and that's it. You remove the motherboard from the top of the unit. That means you yank the keyboard off and pull the palmrest.

If you have any more questions, let us know, and we'll split this thread out. The issue isn't directly related to a bad power supply, so there's no need to clutter up this thread-- this belongs in the "Troubleshooting Dead Machines" forum.

My advice: Read reviews before buying a computer. That will steer you away from Dell everytime. Secondly, if you have to buy replacement parts, either buy another computer with quality, or pick the parts out yourself so you don't pay full price for very low quality parts.

Couldn't have said it any better.

If you just read "consumer reviews" to determine what to buy you'll never buy anything as the only people who usually voice their opinions are those who are unhappy...

I know several people who have Dell systems, and all are quite happy with them.

Same here. Don't most people realize that the most vocal people are the small minority who feel like they've been gipped? The satisfied folks are busy doing things with their working products.

Sorry about posting in wrong area, I'm new to this.

Since, I have stripped the dead laptop of memory and etc per your instructions. Held power button down for 10+ seconds...nothing new. I believe the board is getting power because I checked the back of the connector at the board with a meter and got voltage. I have ruled out the processor because I installed it in the working system and that powers up. I guess I'm dealing with a bad board or break in power at the connector.

You're probably right about a bad board. Just because power's going to it doesn't mean you can't have a bad chip on the board, blown capacitor, or something like that.

At least you know what part you're looking to replace, since you were able to get that processor running in another machine...