No Video on Daughter's Laptop!

My daughter's seven year old Dell Inspiron (Vista) laptop has developed a serious video problem. Within several seconds after booting up to the desktop the screen goes black.

As much as I have preached for her to 'backup frequently' (she has an external drive), it seems she hasn't gotten my message as she now tells me that her last backup was in March - and has since added some very important work on her laptop's HDD!

I plan on seeing her this weekend, bringing a Win PE boot CD just in case the problem is OS-related, but the symptom sounds to me like a hardware problem. So I'm open to any suggestions to recover her important data files.

Cruise

 

Hello Cruise.

Two questions;

1) Have you tried booting into safe mode ?

2) Have you tried connecting to an external monitor ?

If both of the above fail, you could remove the hard drive, install it in an external enclosure, then access the files via another computer.

Good luck !

 

Thanks for those tips!

Cruise

 

I have an older Latitude D810 and it uses an IDE drive. If you want to know for certain, just remove it and look at the connectors.
Alternately, you can go to Dell's website, access 'support', then 'product support'. Enter the service tag number and the original configuration for that laptop will be displayed. Somewhere in the list will be the information about the hard drive as well as everything else hardware related.

 

Bad inverter. Easy fix if you're at all handy.

Dell Inspiron inverters eBay $3-$10.

 

From the description it seems more like a processor overheating problem (it reaches critical temp and gets deactivated to prevent damage).
Either dust has completely covered the fins of the heatsink (similar to this) or the fan does not spin.

Panagiotis

 

How could I determine that for certain (and where is the inverter located)?

 

Panagiotis, I checked-out that blog (uhg!) - she does have a cat and if cat-hair is the problem I sure hope a thorough outside vacuuming (of the side and bottom vents) will remove it. I've never opened-up a laptop and I don''t think I want to go there!

Cruise

 

Theres teardown vids of everything youtube etc.

Sometimes inverters looks bad, burnt or whatever. Google specific Dell model with terms Dell Inspirion xxxx bad inverter etc. If it's a common problem with that model you'll get results.

And for me I'm not an electrician & don't use guages etc. So it's a ~$10 crapshoot, who cares, I'll take a chance.

 

Hey Cruise,

You have gotten some ideas (in addition to your own) as to what the problem could be and I have nothing to add in that regard. However, considering that it's a 7-year old laptop, if the simplistic remedies mentioned fail to resurrect it I would recommend just removing the HDD and insert in into an external USB case so that you can recover your daughter's data (alternatively, perhaps you could temporarily replace your laptop's drive with your daughter's HDD and boot it?). Imho it's simply not worth your time to disassemble that laptop, the only real value here is your daughter's data files!

TS

 

Shadow, you are so right-on. I'll be spending a day with my daughter this weekend and 4 hours of that day will be consumed driving there and back. So with catching-up on what's happening in her life, I figure I'll have less than 4-hours to check out her laptop, vacuum out the vents, try an external monitor, and if it still won't work hopefully her HDD will work in my laptop (if not, I'll get a USB case). As you said, the most valuable thing here is her data files (and my time).

Cruise

 

If you fail it will be s good idea to bring it with you, recover the data and then use your spare time to try to fix it. Not a bad hobby I think. Nice learning opportunity indeed.

 

i face these type of problems many times it could be due to corrupt data virus.....etc or ram problem also it have many tools to check ram .....etc hardware related problem

best solution is use parted magic cd even your ram causing a problem it work as little as 256 mb ram so you can run live os and then form it copy paste your important data to external pendrive .......etc


best part of this tool is it works even on bad ram and disks

i have used it on many bad sectors rams and hardisk disks it always work

after you backup your data then all you need to do is remove ram clean slots with some air blower now hot air one and insert ram again just make sure you insert properly or you may damage it


http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=partedmagic


best is its free opensource and if you like it you can do some donations

 

Thanks for the tip mack_guy (and for the pmagic recommendation). I sure hope the problem is software corruption, or even a RAM problem, as that would make recovering my daughter's data much easier than if it's the video-components, or cpu-cooling. I'll certainly checkout the software-side first.

Cruise

 

you are welcome Cruise

just like to add you can use any linux live cd/dvd like ubuntu linux mint .......any common one it also do your job all you have to do is run OS and copy paste your important files although they require little more ram than parted magic

also xubuntu or linux mint xfce (feel like xp) they all are same base of ubuntu OS just different look due to desktop environment.

one last thing i like to add always have one complete live linux dvd/usb (complete Operating system on dvd i mean)

like this there are more but this one is most easy and most famous

http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=mint

http://www.linuxmint.com/index.php

most of time OS breaks or other small problems its very common in every operating system

at that time

we can do our all important work form running linux live dvd/usb without messing with our broken OS and backup our data when we have free time we repair it

 

mack_guy911,

Your advice is all well and good if Cruise can get video (either on the laptop's screen or by connecting an external monitor)! Otherwise, it will be to no avail and Cruise will have to remove the hard drive from his daughter's laptop in order to recover her data files on another PC.

TS

 

i agree with you Shadow

90% times it work also what would i do is remove ram's and insert one check boot if not working then replace it with another one and check if 1st strategy dont work

also your strategy is more good remove hdd backup and insert it back and check with ram's to play safe with your data if not working then check for expert advice

 

If going this way I'd plug in daughts hdd into another pc & boot to a linux livecd to cut down virus transer chances. And if not to much recused data burn that to dvd.

 

Just to bring a little closure to this thread ...I worked on my daughter's laptop for several hours, trying the following:

1. I first cleared NVRAM by removing the battery and AC-cord then depressing the power switch for 30-sec.

2. Noticing that the CPU fan seemed to come on and then seemingly shut down, I used a can of compressed air to blow-out whatever I could through the vents. All seemed to be clear, but the problem persisted.

3. I then connected an external LCD monitor - still no video, so that told me the internal LCD was ok and not the problem.

4. To eliminate Windows itself as the culprit, I attempted to boot Parted Magic with still no video, so that eliminated Windows (or other related software issues)

5. I swapped the RAM modules (after cleaning the connectors) to make sure this was not due to faulty RAM, but 'no cigar'.

At this point I'm pretty sure that the problem is 'under the hood' and as disassembling her old laptop was (is) not on my agenda, I removed the hard drive. Fortunately, I had an older laptop which I brought with me to my daughter's home and luckily it had the same HDD interface as her laptop! So I inserted her hard drive into my old laptop and booted it with a boot (live) CD. I was then able to see and copy all of my daughter's data files and emails onto a USB flash drive.

My daughter's HDD failed to boot-up in my laptop (probably a driver issue), so I re-installed my HDD, booted the laptop and copied her data files and emails onto my HDD. My laptop had the apps that she uses, so she is temporarily 'back in business', but is now thinking about a MacBook!!!

Cruise

 

On a serious note good for you.


Good thing macbook HDD don't die.

 

sorry if HDD die then how did you make a backup

did you try it using only one ram only i guess you should make your system check at dell center it could be ram or motherboard problem or anything else

also you can scan HDD or your backup external data with any bootable linux antivirus cd like kaspersky bitdefender for example

macbook indeed good options or you can repair old laptop if less costly and put linux on it

 

Sorry, but I don't get what you are trying to tell me here.

 

Huh? Where is this coming from? I never said that the HDD died.

Yes, I did --> no difference.

Cruise

 

At least you were able to retrieve the data; that was the primary goal.

From here, you could try to save her laptop and invest in a new video card but the fan issue makes me think the motherboard is the problem.
It the MB is the problem, that should pretty much end the discussion.
My Latitude D810 (used) with XP, 2GB of RAM, a 60GB hard drive and a warranty cost just over $100.00. It's very basic but so are my needs. You can't get a laptop repaired for that amount of money
The point is with older laptops, replacement is nearly always the better option.

Good luck in your search for a new laptop.

 

Since it is clearly a hardware issue, Macbooks offer minimal if any advantage over high-quality manufacturers like Asus and Lenovo. In fact, I'd say OS X is generally a disadvantage except in niche scenarios.

Basically zapjb was expressing his sarcasm at the perception of Apple superiority.