Dell Inspiron 1520. Black Screen

[jollyjohn]

G'day

My daughter's laptop Dell Inspiron 1520, about four years old, won't start. not even the BIOS shows up. I connected it to my flat monitor in case the screen was gone, but nothing, only the power blue light comes on, no beeps, not anything.

Before I open it I'd like to try to get it started and recover the data from the HDD.

If I cannot get it to boot I will open it and remove the HDD and retrieve the data from it.

The laptop came with Vista installed, but the OS was updated to Windows 7, (I don't know which one), lo I cannot use the recovery disks for Vista.

I need suggestions. The number one priority is to recover the data. If I can revive the laptop it would be a bonus, but this is not very important as my daughter bought a new laptop.

What can I try before I open the box?

Thanks for any ideas

John

Edit:

I forgot to mention, a new battery was installed, too.

[AlanHK]

It's usually pretty easy to take a laptop hard disk out.
Small Phillips head screwdriver, undo a retaining screw or two and then just pull it out.

You can get a USB cable for about $5 to plug it onto a PC and read the data off it.

Need to check what kind of disk it is, SATA or IDE. Or just take it to a PC shop and ask for a matching cable.

Sounds like a hardware failure. How easy to fix, no idea.

For further advice, I'd advise going to a site like http://forum.notebookreview.com/dell/

[jollyjohn]

Thanks AlanHK. I have all I need to disassemble the laptop and read the HDD.

Thank you for the link.

John

[nic2k4]

Like Alan said no need to open the case, just 2 screws and pull out the caddy. If it's anything like a 1525, the drive is at the front left hand corner.

From your description of the problem I'd say the motherboard is toasted (more than likely the BGA chipset), but they do have issues with the power connector board. Do you know if the new battery you installed was charged? If you can run it on the battery alone, that would point to the connector board. If you really wanted to, you could check ebay for a motherboard, fix it and sell it. Otherwise, just sell it or it's parts on ebay. Don't trash it, it's bad for the environment.

You can get a USB enclosure cheap and use the old drive for portable storage.

[Nelson37]

Sounds like you are toast. If you can borrow a new power supply cord, it is possible the transformer has failed. Check it and see if it gets warm after an hour or two. If not, different cord is worth a try. However, it is probably not worth purchasing a new one for a PC that old.

The other thing is to try holding the power connector at the PC end at various angles to see if it will boot. These often get broken or cracked at the connector end as the PC is moved with the cable attached.

[jollyjohn]

Thanks everyone for the advice. I'll start playing with it today. I'll deep you posted with the progress.

John

[jollyjohn]

G'day

I downloaded the manual for the laptop, removed the HDD (piece of cake, four retaining screws underneath) and retrieved all data and made an image of it,too. Also I connected the HDD to my PC and it booted OK, It took sometime to install new drivers and rebooted. All on it's own. It surprised me how small the HDD is for 160GB.

Next job will be to try to boot the laptop, but that can wait.

Thanks for the tips.

John