I was given a Dell Inspiron 1150. It worked for a day and then I updated all Windows security stuff. The friend that gave it to me explained that I needed to fully charge and then fully discharge the battery to get it to last longer. After updating, I rebooted and left on without charger plugged in. Now it will turn on (with the charger on) and I see the power button on and hear the hard drive spin gut get absolutely nothing on the screen nor on my desktop monitor when I plug it into the video plug and type "function F8" labeled "crt/lcd". I don't know if the Windows killed it or running it completely down on battery killed it. Any suggestions? BTW, like a good boy I perused 65 pages of threads on monitors here and did not see quite the problem I am having.

Nothing you did should have had any effect on the screen. With that said, there is something wrong with your video adapter, it might have just been a coincidence. If you know how to access your router, turn the laptop on and connect it to the network. If your router sees it on the list of attached devices you know it's an issue with the video, not the laptop as a whole.

There is a chance, although slim, that if this system was unused for a long time then reconnecting it could have worn out the old video adapter.

Thank you for your imput, I have since found out that it had a bad memory module! When removed, the machine booted up perfectly (altho a bit slowly with only 256 ram installed) Again, thanks. Captnjj