Nice to meet you! Me and my 13-yr-old son are newbie nerds, we are planning to build a desktop together. We saved up and bought our striker motherboard but, its going to be a while before we can afford the rest of the parts. In the interm, we really need our Dell Inspirion 1100 to work. Right now, it won't even turn on At first it was like it had a power cord issue, it would be on and plugged in but the screen would go to power save mode as it switched to battery-only power. I would move the power cord and it would register the power again. Pretty soon I knew you had to have the power cord adjusted right so it would not be moved while the computer was on. Then it seemed as though it was the screen couldn't be moved while it was on either. Then one day it just wouldn't turn on period. We prepared the desk like a surgical table and opened it up. It had so much dust in the fan - power sink area it was stupid. We removed the power sink and cleaned it up. After this we put it back together. It started for a second then turned off. Then it started a second time and actually came up with the "resuming windows" screen but turned off midstream... What should I check next? Is there a good reference website to understand how to rebuild or repair these things that anyone is aware of? Is there perhaps one part that will shut down the whole computer if it doesn't work anymore?

With the computer turned off and unplugged. Remove the battery and reseat the memory modules/sticks inside the memory bay. Put all the components back then start your computer.

If the problem still persists, repeat the process and at this time test one stick at a time in both memory slots or try to test the sticks in another computer (if any).

Clean first the gold contacts of your memory stick with a pencil eraser.

Thanks Fren for your suggestions, my son and I will test it this weekend and post the results.
-MichelleReBelle

Does your bios have a processor temprature checker because i think it's the over heat that is causing the computer to turn off. Check it in your BIOS and see what is the shut off temperature