dell inspiron 8100 dead

[windsor2]

Hi all,
I have a dell inspiron 8100. I was having troubles with it starting. It would boot up and get a screen that said it could not locate a boot device. It would not find the cd rom drive or locate the hard drive. This is after an extended period of not working at all. Well I had the bright idea of taking it completely apart. So with my trusty manual in hand I completely gutted it down to the processor and motherboard being removed and dissassembled and I even disconnected the reserve battery. After putting it all back together twice. All that it will do is the lights for startup will light up for about 5 seconds then it dies it will not post, and the fans and harddrive aren't accessed. I have tried starting it up with the harddrive removed, just battery power, just ac, memory removed. Any thoughts. Please save me from myself. It had worked fine in the past.

Thanks,
Mike

[BuggZ]

Did you remove the processor from the motherboard?

[windsor2]

Yes I did. Then reinstalled it.

[BuggZ]

You may want to check that the processor is properly seated and the socket is locked. This can cause a laptop to not post.

[businesscards]

yea

[businesscards]

try that :mrgreen: :) yupp

[bayrrej]

Hi all,
I have a dell inspiron 8100. I was having troubles with it starting. It would boot up and get a screen that said it could not locate a boot device. It would not find the cd rom drive or locate the hard drive. This is after an extended period of not working at all. Well I had the bright idea of taking it completely apart. So with my trusty manual in hand I completely gutted it down to the processor and motherboard being removed and dissassembled and I even disconnected the reserve battery. After putting it all back together twice. All that it will do is the lights for startup will light up for about 5 seconds then it dies it will not post, and the fans and harddrive aren't accessed. I have tried starting it up with the harddrive removed, just battery power, just ac, memory removed. Any thoughts. Please save me from myself. It had worked fine in the past.

Thanks,
Mike

Did you ever get this working? I've gone through 3 motherboards that all do the same thing. Lights up for a second, then shuts off -- no fans, nothing. Almost seems like a bios reset/flash issue?

jb

[windsor2]

No I never did get it running. Ended up just buying a new laptop and am going to sell the other for parts.
Thanks for responding.

Mike

[starband69]

I have a dell Inspiron 8000 that will not start. After pressing the start button it will only make a few sounds and you can see a quick bleep in the screen and nothing elese happens. Can anybody help

[mikeIndy]

I found this thread, I know it's 3 months old, but it was still good to read so I'll go ahead and respond.

I spent alot of time trying to diagnose a fan problem on a Dell Inspiron 8100. laptops make their fans turn on and off all the time, which is kind of stupid, because the silly fan circuit will wear out before the rest of the computer does, the little transistor starts shorting out and screwing up everything, screwing up your bios.

the problems you are having where it won't boot sound like a messed up bios.

Anyways, I wish I knew why they don't just do like they do on desktops and just turn the fan on and leave it on, then it will never ruin the computer, since there's no transistor in the fan circuit, much simpler, who wouldn't rather put up with the little laptop fan noise than have to get a new motherboard or throw their laptop away because the fan circuit is ruined? the laptop fan goes on and off constantly anyways. so dumb.

[mikeIndy]

if they just left the fan on all the time, the heating and cooling wouldn't be as big a change, the processor would last longer. dumb, tell the laptop manufacturers to just leave the fan on all the time, like desktops, you can deal with the fan noise, you can't deal with the chips and circuits not working

[mikeIndy]

and when is someone going to think of putting a handle on laptops?

I see commercials where teams of laptop scientists are trying to figure out how to make your laptops better, hey, PUT A HANDLE ON THE THING!! SO YOU CAN CARRY IT!!

They may not put handles on them as a way to sell more laptops, though, to maintain profitability, because you'll drop it more often.