Motherboard or hard drive?

[Katydid52]

I have a Latitude 600 and when I turn it on, it may take up to 10 minutes or not at all. It will only stay on about 10 minutes or so then has a message saying preparing standby in order to eject.... The battery died just before this started happening. I have been in contact with Dell support 3 times...one said hard drive dying, another said motherboard, another said power supply...so which is it? I tried to do the test by pressing Fn and the power button but that does not work. I doubt this old thing is worth putting a new motherboard. I was also advised to never try working on a laptop myself..is it really that bad? Thanks

 

[fastco]

Try replacing the power adapter first. Does the computer boot normally and are you able to access all of your files and folders. If the hard drive was failing those wouldn't be the symptoms in my opinion. Also go into the control panel and change the power settings to never hibrinate and to go into standby after say 60 minutes of inactivity and turn off hard disks after at least 60 minutes. See if those things help.

 

[Katydid52]

motherboard or hard drive

thanks so much for your help! Yes, I can access all my files and folders. Everything seems to work just fine once it starts. It just takes a while to get it going and often it takes several tries to get it to boot. After a short while it will give me that message about going to standby and then it will quit or the mouse will stop working. Funny thing is, it worked fine when I sent the message after giving me all this trouble for about 3 weeks now and it just booted like there was nothing wrong. I did what you advised, however on the hibernate tab it only gives me the option for hibernate support. The box is unchecked. Should I check it? I am not sure my fan is working as it should. It doesn't run all the time. I thought that it may not run at all but it did today. Could that also cause any of these problems? I am running windows 2000 in case it helps any. Sorry for such a long post but I wanted to give you all the info you may need. Thanks again

 

[fastco]

Don't check hibernate it causes problems on some computers. Overheating could be causing your problems also, didn't even think about that. You can download Speedfan to monitor you temps.
https://www.techspot.com/downloads/547-speedfan.html