A friend of mine had four laptops that he needs fixed. He's told me that they seem to have hard drive problems so he sent them to another guy who couldn't figure anything out about them, so now he's looking at me to fix them. Problem is, they don't turn on at all (except for the older Dell Inspiron he has, which just flashes the capslock key a few times before powering right back down - haven't looked in to that one yet). I'm working on his newer Inspiron 1600 right now, which again won't turn on - no LEDs, no fan spin-up, nothing. So I went right into disassembling it to see if I could find anything, but I didn't. So I'm looking for help. Anyone have any ideas for possible causes of all these laptops to fail? He said if I could fix more than one, I could have the rest along with an old HDD of his. ...I really should get in contact with the guy he brought these to. For all I know he could have used them to jump on or somethin'... I mean, obviously they worked with the original owner, or he wouldn't have guessed a hard drive problem, and he's not stupid enough to immediately assume without at least trying to check what was up. So... any help?
have you tried another power brick? battery? uninstalling the battery and just using the power brick to power the laptops? could be a fault with the power input on the motherboard.
I was thinkin' about getting a different charger for 'em, yeah, but I'm not so sure if three different laptops could fail in that way. And I tried the battery trick. Same thing. Something interesting, though: the Dell Inspiron 1600's adapter light doesn't turn on when it's plugged into the wall. I left it on overnight (I know, bad idea) and it didn't even get warm. So I'm thinking the adapter is a problem on at least that one. I couldn't talk to the other guy that was trying to fix the laptops, but I talked to the owner (of the laptops, no the guy) and he said that the other guy took all the laptops apart to see what the problem was. And now they won't turn on at all... So I'm guessing he did something to 'em all, maybe crossed some wires or somethin'. We'll see.
Update: Managed to get the 1300 (not a 1600... those don't exist) on, but it's BIOS is password protected and it's detecting a change in hardware. Time to do the paperclip method...
Okay, the paperclip method worked, and I've managed to wipe/fry the chip containing the BIOS password and laptop serial number that Dell uses to identify their computers. I have to say, this is unbelievably awesome. I'd like to make a howto of this, but I'm not sure if it would be allowed, what with it wiping passwords and all. So, if any moderators or admins are reading this, would I have permission to do this? By the way, three laptops still need fixing, so this thread is still going to be used.
