My Dell Inspiron 1100 fell off the table and now it will not boot
Hi, first off this seems like a great site! I’m excited to fix my problem with everyone’s help. Here is my story:
I’ve got a Dell Inspiron 1100 which took an unfortunate fall off my coffee table and did a face plant (screen down) on the floor…after that it will not boot and the display will not show up either. The battery will charge and the power light will come on so I do not think it is a power problem. The fan also turns on for about 10-20 seconds then stops. The power light remains on until I press the power key again.
Now, I’ve done some research on this site and some others and I was able to open up the laptop correctly following a guide and look at everything. Things look okay (nothing was cracked or anything obvious…) and I basically cleaned the inside using an air can and disconnected the keyboard, monitor, and processor and reconnected them all. The problem was the same.
I read on this site that the CPU might not be seated properly but I don’t know how to clean off the old heat sink gel stuff and put the new stuff on or anything else I should check for.
Am I on the right track? Any help or other ideas would be appreciated. Thanks.
You are on the right track. I’ve seen some dropped laptops and so far I’ve been able to fix them simply by reseating the connections. Try to turn on the laptop with an external monitor attached and see if you can get video. It is possible that the laptop works fine, but the video cable on the back of the LCD screen was disconnected and you cannot the internal video. Check if the memory module is seated properly; remove it from the memory slot an install back. Check if the wireless card is seated properly. My last dropped laptop didn’t boot because of the not properly connected wireless card. Reconnect all cables that you can access. Any loose connection can prevent the laptop from starting.
As a last resort, when you have nothing to loose, you can try next. Disassemble the laptop and start to assemble it back from scratch. Remove all devices and leave only the system board, the memory and the CPU with the cooling module attached. It should be enough to get a basic video output on an external monitor. After you booted it with video, start attaching other devices and try to turn it on after each step.
You can clean off the old thermal grease I usually use an alcohol wipe. You can get instructions for cleaning the CPU and applying new thermal grease here.
August 6th, 2009 at 6:12 pm
SOUNDS LIKE YOU BROKE YOUR SCREEN
June 1st, 2009 at 8:16 pm
Hi,
I have a Toshiba laptop that is about three years old. It fell from my bed which is about 2 ft 4″. I picked it up immediately, and the screen was normal. But, after a few seconds, it turned a dark blue color. So, I turned it off manually. I then restarted it manually and a black screen with white font gave me the option to start it normally, which I chose. Everything was going normally, although a little slow, but when it came to the picture as my background, it just froze. The icons did not appear, and I am unable to right click. So, I continued to turn it off and on over a period of time, and just wait for the icons and such to show up, but they never did. I’m curious if I should just open up the hard drive and see if anything is disconnected, but I don’t know a lot about computer parts, and I don’t want to do any further damage. This is extremely frustrating, and I a wondering if there is something I can do.
December 21st, 2008 at 9:04 pm
Hi, I have a 5 year old Dell Inspiron 1100. The original AC adapter had to be replaced last year, as it wouldn’t power the computer. Now, the replacement seems to be going out. A few minutes ago, I turned the computer on and it showed that it was running on battery power. The AC adapter light was green but it was blinking. Finally, the battery went dead. I couldn’t start the computer, I tried to jiggle the dc connection with no luck. I messed with the adapter itself, nothing. The green light still blinked. I went to Best Buy to replace it but no luck. I decided to try it one last time and sure enough, the green light stopped blinking and it worked. When the computer started, there was an error message about the adapter but I don’t remember what it said.
Does it sound like I have a problem with the AC adapter or something else?
Thank you for your help.
August 18th, 2008 at 9:31 pm
Hello!
I hope there is a simple answer to my trouble, but somehow doubt it. It seems that computers and I don’t get along very well no matter how hard I try! I have a Dell Inspiron 1100 laptop and I dropped it about 3 feet onto carpet, landed “back first”. I booted it and used it with no troubles and when I put it in hibernation and came back to use it later I had NOTHING…… no lights, nothing, even when I plug in the AC adapter – no lights appear. I took the battery out and reseated, took the memory out and reseated with no avail. Could it be I destroyed the power pack?? Help? Thank you in advance for any thoughts.
August 14th, 2008 at 3:25 am
I have a Dell latitiude 1100 thqat will not boot or show any sighn of powering up. I bought it on ebay as “working fine” but should have checked sellers fb more carefully!! Arriveed with no power supply so had to wait a week or 2 to attempt to power it up. Seller says sorry but it was working when shipped and have no control over what you did with it for 2 weeks !! Yeah right looking at it musta killed it!!!
July 19th, 2008 at 6:19 am
I recently dropped my Toshiba satellite A200, and now it won’t boot. After I turn it on, it will go through normal procedures for the first 5-10 seconds, and then get stuck without even moving onto the second screen. When I first started it up, it made a loud grinding noise, but stopped when it got the point where it normally stops working, and did not occur after i rebooted. I rebooted again and just let the computer sit there, and after about 20 minutes it realized it couldn’t boot, and thus first asked for a system restore, which i did, but that didn’t work. I then decided to try and access the booting options (ie F12) and tried to boot from a cd, but that didn’t work either (ie the computer shut itself down). When I went into the boot options and started the computer per hard drive, a blue screen with some writing appeared for about half a second and then the computer shut off. I then tried to get back to the point where the computer realized it couldn’t boot, and made it check for hardware and software errors, and it told me that start up repair could not automatically repair the problem, and then gave me some options such as running command prompt, or using a recovery disk (which unfortunately i do not have) I then ran command prompt, and was able to access both C and D drive, but E drive, which I think must be my second drive could not be opened (it said the device was not ready) which is a little worrying, but I don’t understand how this could affect the booting as it does not contain windows. I also went to the place where I bought the computer, and they said they couldn’t help, but told me it wasn’t the ram or bios, and seeing as I can access my HDD’s using command prompt, I am guessing this, or the motherboard, isn’t the problem either, unless only certain files needed for booting where damaged? I have absolutely no idea what could be wrong. Any ideas on what could be wrong, and more importantly, if it can be fixed without clearing my HDD’s, would be appreciated, at the moment I have no idea what to do, so I am pretty desperate. Thanks a million and sorry I couldn’t explain it better.
June 12th, 2008 at 12:14 am
I found two laptops a toshiba a60 and a dell inspiron 1100 both pswrd protected…toshiba no problem i got working but the dell pain in the rear..if anyone knows how to get past the Bios pswrd plz let me know i’ll greatly apreciate it thnx
April 27th, 2008 at 5:17 pm
I have a Dell Latitude Laptop that will not boot. I checked some of the web pages and it looks like there is a problem with the switch on the lid. A few times I had fully extended the top of the computer and it booted up, now there is nothing.
Please Help,
JK