Help! Dell Inspiron 6000 won't power up

[emarkd]

Hello all,

First time posting here. This looks like a strong community and I hope somebody can help me.

I've got an Inspiron 6000 that is several years old and has never given me any major trouble until last night. It's a Pentium M 1.6 with 1.25 Gigs ram on two modules - 256 MB that came with it and a 1 Gig module that I added a couple of years ago. It runs Ubuntu Linux.

I was watching a movie and using firefox when it simply shut down. And I don't mean went dead - it actually shut down quickly but gracefully. X clearly died first and then the rest of the OS went down, much faster than normal but not just a total power failure. When I turned it over it was very hot on the bottom, so I figure it overheated. It's never done it before but I haven't blown the dust out of it in a while.

Now it won't turn on, at all. The test button on the battery shows a full charge and the AC adapter light functions normally, but pressing the power button does nothing. It's had about 8 hours to cool now so I know it's not still hot. Any ideas? What should I check and how do I check it?

Thanks for your help,
-Mark

 

[kimsland]

Have a look here: Tutorial: No POST (Power On Self Test

 

[emarkd]

Thank you! The very first step, dispersing internal voltage, got my laptop booting again, where I was immediately greeted by a message about shutting down due to high internal temperature. Time to clean out the laptop!

I'm a software guy, so hardware's not my strong point, but I never would've thought about there being an issue with built up internal voltage. Sure, I realize there's caps in there storing power, but enough to prevent booting? Strange to me but I'm glad it worked.

Thanks again!

 

[kimsland]

Thanks for the update :grinthumb
That fix solves 50% of all laptop No Post faults I see