Help: Dell Latitude Won't Post Anymore!

[Bullhajj]

Hurm. I donated a Dell Latitude Cpi to the daycare where my kids go to school. They've had it for about 6 months and asked me to investigate a problem where it no longer posts.

I took it home and sure enough, it won't post. When I hit the power button, the lights flash on and I hear it attempt to start, but after a few seconds it just shuts down. I have no idea. It's plugged in and I see the battery light is blinking, but it won't start up. When I do attempt to start it, I see the power and keyboard lights (numlock, capslock, and scrolllock) flash, I hear it start to engage, but then it all just cuts out with an audible click. The screen never lights up, nothing.

When I gave it up, it worked fine. I think it has WinMe or Win2k on it. The only problem was the latch for the cover broke so you can no longer snap the lid shut. Any one have any ideas? It's only a 400 so it's probably not worth much, but I would like to get it running again if I can.

[Jason McMaster]

well, reseat all the devices. reconnect all the ribbon cables. That's the first thing I'd do.

[Bullhajj]

well, reseat all the devices. reconnect all the ribbon cables. That's the first thing I'd do.

Thanks, Jason! I don't know much about laptops, but it looks like the only thing you can access is the memory, which I did reseat. It didn't seem to help.

[Bullhajj]

Ah, ha. I yanked out both batteries and now it starts. I guess one of the batteries is bad or mabye it was just seated poorly.

[Jason McMaster]

Yeah, all PCs are weird in that if anything shifts a little, it has a chance of not starting at all. That's why I always reseat anything first.

Glad it helped :)