Dell Latitude E6500 won't turn on

Question

Laptop simply won't turn on. Power button is pressed, some HDD or cd-rom noises can be heard and it shuts down after a while. If anyone finds this useful, here is a movie (ignore the notification sound at the beginning):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlJLue-Si-Q

It all started like a year ago and was getting stronger with time. First symptoms were such that after going sleep / hibernation or turning off, laptop won't turn on, just like now, but back then I just needed to wait a few minutes, with no power supply nor battery connected, and it worked again. The time needed to get it going was getting longer with time, and ended up like this nowadays.

Any ideas? Seems like some kind of element (circuit, capacitor) was deteriorating? Do you think it is worth getting it fixed? Please help.

Answer 1

Laptops are notorious for small IC failure, unfortunately if this is the case there's not much you can do except a full swap for the failing component. First thing you'll need to do is identify which component it is; considering it's a booting issue, chances are it's either the RAM, the CPU or the motherboard itself. If you have access to spare parts, you can try a part swap (just make sure the RAM/CPU are of the same speed/type/etc to validate) to see if the RAM or CPU is the culprit.

You could also try removing the battery and just having the laptop plugged in to the power supply with the battery disconnected; I had an old Dell that refused to boot with the battery plugged in .. I used it as a home router so it didn't matter much.

Hope that helps

Answer 2

My Dell E6500 needs to be cool in order to be able to boot.

Cool like being up to 25 degrees celsius or maybe even less than 20. So during hot summer days it is a real problem. During autumn I may bring it outside for a while, and during winter it is enough to keep it in colder room for about half a hour.

It is entirely fine with becoming "hot" afterwards.

Of course the above instruction does not solve the real cause and all the annoyances of this problem. It only helps to boot the laptop where otherwise it would refuse to boot.

The problem is is bad also because the laptop does not have reset button. Being able to reset would prevent some cases of needing the shut down in the first place. So any answer or comment regarding prevention of shutdowns would be of help too.

Warning: do not bring the laptop outside while it is "too" hot, while it is rather cold outside. Neither boot it up after being outside in too cold conditions. Else condensation might occur inside laptop components and break something. You may most likely break your hard disk this way.