so now this is happening.

[dira]

This morning in the midst of my standard morning LJ-check, my laptop shut down. Just, went dark and stopped. It wasn't hot, there was no power disruption, and no error message. Now when I press the power button the power light and caps lock/number lock/other thing I can't identify that isn't wifi lights come on, stay on for two or three seconds (long enough for the external hard drive to detect the computer is turned on and start up) and then go out. Nothing else. I thought maybe the screen did the subtle flash from "turned off" to "turned on but showing black" and then back but it's pretty bright in my living room so it's kind of hard to tell.

ETA: Computer is three years and two months old and therefore, naturally, two months out of the longest-available warranty, which I dutifully bought so that this would not happen until right now.

Anybody have any ideas about what this might be and whether it might be fixable and, if fixable, how long it might take and oh god how much it might cost?

/o\

Comments

[mrshamill]

Ahhh, one of those. I'm almost a Dell certified tech, and I've worked on those stupid machines. Here's a Dell test that will give you a clue on what's wrong --

remove the hard drive,optical drive,memory modules,and battery.Then hold the power button and the fn key down for 10 seconds,if all the lights(Caps lock,Scroll lock,Num lock,not the wifi) across the front of the system blink(power light should stay lit also).Your MOBO and or video card need to be replaced

If they don't blink, it should reset your system and you should be good to go... for a while. But the fact that it's not booting means one of the two pieces (the mobo or the video card) is going. Luckily, they're easy to replace and shouldn't cost an arm and a leg.

Hoped that helped.

[dira]

Yyyyeah, as I said, I don't mess with hardware, so this is the point where I find some nice pros to do that for me and tell me what it means. :)

[petronia]

A word of thanks from a complete stranger passing by - I've had a dead XPS M1330 sitting around for two months now with a similar problem (boots irregularly from wall power, keeps rebooting and won't turn back off once on, doesn't boot or run off battery), and will be trying this test. XD;