dell inspiron 5150

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the laptop has no desktop.it turns on, hd spins but no desktop.there's no beeps
the screen has a blinking cursor in the upper left hand corner of the screen.it's a friend of a friend's.this person said it was never dropped.i'm not that familar with
laptops but if i can fix it; i'll give it a shot.


thanks

[NooNoo]

Do you get the boot information screen? Can you get into bios/setup?

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happy mother's day noo noo and thanks for the reply.there's no info screen and i can't get to bios

[NooNoo]

Does the laptop have a floppy drive it's not possible to tell from the manual exactly what bootable options you have there.

Have you tried booting with a bootable cd?

It looks like from what you have said that the bios is upset... very upset. Is there any charge in the battery? Have you tried with and without the battery?

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sorry noonoo this going to be a post and go.thats the laptop.it has no floppy
drive.the laptop doesn't boot with or without the battery.the person can't find the discs which came with the pc.i'll try it with a bootable cd ina few
hours.

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ok i pulled the battery out;and used the power pack.that didn't work.
replaced battery and that didn't work
tried an xp disk and ultimate boot cd. they didn't work
the result was the same;there's a flashing cursor in upper left of screen.
i'm unable get into bios.the hard drive is spinning.also no strange noises.
also tried removing hd and restarting result was same as above.

[markduren2458]

bios has gone to the great computer in the sky...unless you can get in and clear the cmos...new motherboard

[NooNoo]

If you take apart the laptop, you may be able to find the system battery, try pulling that for a while and see if you can get it to reset (you will have to pull the big battery and the mains cable as well).

Fortunately Dell has the service manual online

Make sure you have lots of little pots to put all the various screws in!!