It's an older laptop that died a while ago that I'm trying to revive. Basically when I turn it on the fan cycles twice and the power light is on then turns off. Screen remains black the entire time.
I've opened it a few times and adjusted the fan, unplugged and replugged all the connections, hard drive, monitor etc. to no avail.
Not being all that tech savvy I need some advice. I can use a screwdriver and am not afraid to rip the thing apart.

Josh

does it do this when it is plugged into the wall? if you haven't tried yet, then try now and see what happens, and update the thread.

Yes, the battery originally was dead so I charged it to 100%, left it plugged into the wall and attempted to turn it on. I've tried it unplugged as well. It hasn't gotten past the fan cycling yet...

There's a lot of possible problems here, but if you are willing to rip it open you might want to take a look at the memory and take it out and reseat it in the motherboard.

First, take the battery out for 15-20 seconds and then pop it back in and see what happens.

So I finally got around to removing the memory, which is just about one of the only things I haven't removed. I removed the CPU unit underneath the fan as well. The connection looked like there was a bunch of build up between the fan and CPU. Still getting the same results. Fan cycles twice, only the disc LED lights up and then it shuts down. The screen never shows a cursor of any sign of life...

Have you tried taking the disc drive out and booting?

No I haven't removed any of the disk drives, floppy or CD. I really miffed as to what the problem is. I don't know if the memory is bad, the CPU or anything. What would be the cause of the system to not even enter boot-up? Would the hard drive have failed? I've looked through the manual and didn't find an explanation as to what the cause is. Seems like I've been through all the troubleshooting and don't see a solution...again not that tech savvy though...

You need to strip it down and add components back on one at a time -- if it doesn't boot with just the cpu in place then there's a problem with either the motherboard or wherever it's getting power from

Interesting, I'll try that. Does that mean remove the hard dive as well? Process of elimination...

Yeah, but of course don't try powering it up without the heatsink attached to the CPU, because if it starts up it could burn up pretty fast.