Dell Vostro 500 not working

[DJduck]

Hi!

I bought this laptop from a friend for €28. He got it from a guy who said that the hdd was broken, so he swapped the hdd and the laptop worked with XP for some time, and the would not power on suddenly. It turns on, flashes all the lights, fan is running, you can hear the dvd seek sound two times, and the it turns of after about 5 seconds. Now i know most of you would probably say that it's a fried gpu, but the thing is that he told me that the laptop didn't even get hot and the graphics are by Intel anyway. Anyone knows a solution to this? Reseating the ram does not help. And also, i belive that if i get it working, then i can upgrade the celeron 540 to a core 2 duo? Its socket P and has the intel 965 chipset with x3100 graphics, so it should be possible?

[gabik111]

Re: Dell Vostro 500 not working

Can you see any screen activity?
I would say that CPU can overheat and shut down the system. Check CPU and its heatsink with thermal compound.
You can remove components such as HDD , DVDrom , wifi card , and one RAM chip and turn it on and see what will be. If it stay on longer you got faulty component.
Good luck.

[DJduck]

Re: Dell Vostro 500 not working

Will check it ! Nothing on the screen. Im going to record a short video clip to give a better idea. Maybe it's a short or bad component in the cpu vrm and that's what is causing it to turn off ? Probably not the ram, it would beep.

[DJduck]

Re: Dell Vostro 500 not working

Alright, tried removing the ram, wifi, dvd and hdd all at the same time and individually and tried the other ram slot, and still nothing, absolutely the same. Also tried it without the cpus, plugge in and without a battery, still nothing. Turns on, spins the disk and fan, and then turns off. Total runtime is about 10 seconds. Any ideas?

[DJduck]

Re: Dell Vostro 500 not working

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ya-I...ature=youtu.be
The two cracking sounds are made by the optical drive

[Tuomo]

Re: Dell Vostro 500 not working

Alright, tried removing the ram, wifi, dvd and hdd all at the same time and individually and tried the other ram slot, and still nothing, absolutely the same. Also tried it without the cpus, plugge in and without a battery, still nothing. Turns on, spins the disk and fan, and then turns off. Total runtime is about 10 seconds. Any ideas?

Try measure CPU voltages during boot and shutdown.

[DJduck]

Re: Dell Vostro 500 not working

Ok, but i need to get a new multimeter first

[DJduck]

Re: Dell Vostro 500 not working

ALRIGHTGUYS! This id just fucking weird. I took the laptop apart today to check the board for burnt/cracked/missing components, and didn't find any. But for the whole time, i had the CMOS battery out, for about 5-10 min. So after not finding anything, i put it back together and turned it on. To my suprise, it did not just shut down, it stayed on. So i used the power button to force turn it off, and after that i booted ot up again, and..... we have display!! So a tip here: If you think your board is dead, try re-seating the bios battery. I think that my friend messed with the bios and screwed something up.