# Dell Inspiron 1721 just won't boot



## sepalm (Mar 22, 2010)

Hi all,

My friend has a Dell Inspiron 1721 (AMD turion 64), running windows vista. She's had it for 2 years, and the other day it packed up whilst she was watching a film. 

10 minutes into the film, the display apparently starting getting distorted (bits of green appearing all over). She thought it was just a bad copy, so she tried ctrl+alt+del but no response, so she held down the power button until it turned off. She tried to turn it back on, the LCD display doesn't even light up, just black as if still turned off, but the fan turns on, dvd light, power light, and bluetooth light.

I've searched online, and have taken it apart and reseated the ram in every combination, removed the keyboard, reseated the HD, tried connecting it via s-video to another display (in the hope it was the screen), but nothing seems to work. 

The only odd thing is, when you plug it in to the mains power supply, the power supply light comes on then disappears after a few seconds. Yet the battery is removed so the power is still flowing. When I start the laptop, the HD light comes on for a few seconds then disappears. With no ram in the laptop, the number lock and caps lock lights come on for about a minute and then the computer turns itself off, but with ram installed, neither come on, but it stays turned on. 

I really can't figure out what it is, but I read a page with similar problems to mine, and he concluded it must be the motherboard.

If anyone can help, it would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks alot,

Simon.


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## SA Spurs1 (May 2, 2009)

Does it boot up. Can you here the hard drive spinning when it boots up. If you power it up with an external monitor do you get an image on the monitor. FN F8 toggles between the LCD and monitor. You can try to remove. RAM, CD/DVD rom drive, hard drive, battery, expresscard and anything you have plugged in externally to the computer. With all out press and hold down the power button for 30 seconds without battery and power adapter connected. Then put in one memory module at a time one slot at a time and see if you can power it up on a/c adapter power only. If you can get it to boot then you can put everything back one step at a time. If you can not get it to POST then your motherboard may be faulty. If the green light on the A/C adapter is not on then your A/C adapter may be faulty. If your A/C adapter is on and then goes out when you plug it into your motherboard then your motherboard is faulty.


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