PCA Forums

The fan on my sisters laptop died last week, so i got a new one, put it in, and nothing. The fan spins up, but that is the only thing that does anything. No screen, cant tell for sure if the hard drive is spinning nothing.

Any help would be greatly appreciated...

You might have a short, or a loose ground wire or something of the sort..??

The only ground wire i think i even took off was the one on the screen. I wasnt sure how exaclty to get the thing apart, and i know i did some extra work, but the only thing i unhooked other then fan was the screen.

hmmm... Is there a button on the keyboard to hit to tell it to boot to a different monitor?

um, not to my knowledge. Its a dell inspiron 1000 btw... i never really used it much, is there anything that would really make any noise other then the fan?

you should hear the hard drive spin up...just put your ear close to the keyboard and listen for it. if you haven't checked it already, remove the hard drive and reseat it in case it's not in all the way after you had it apart.

tried that, still wont do anything. i dont do much with lappies, so im pretty clueless about it.

I've only started working on them in the last year. Most of the time they just require a lot of finess (sp?). I have successfully fixed about 9 of them so far with various issues.

Did you use a Dell replacement fan or some fan that happened to fit? You have to get a genuine Dell replacement. Lappy fans usually have some electronics in them that tell the mobo that the fan is working. Most laptops won't power up if they detect a fan failure.

Only thing I can think of. That or you put it back together wrong or damaged something when you put it back together. Easy to do. I won't work inside lappies. That's a young man's job with good eyesight and the right tools.

You can try taking the mobo out of the chassi and hooking up power and an external monitor and seeing if you get anything, if you do, you've got a short when you put it back in look a little closer and try it step by step till it won't power on.. GL!

i bought a dell replacement fan off of ebay. its the exact same one as the fan i pulled out. i might look at it later, i just got off work, 3rd shift isnt really much fun. specailly when the cnc router your using breaks down and you realize its still running windows 95.

Ok, so i finally got everything put back together right, and it starts up, but will sometimes shut off. It almost seems like if i dont move it, it will run fine, but if i move it at all, it shuts itself off. it gives me the one light left on, and u have to hold down the power button for like 10 seconds to actually get it shut off. it does the same thing as it used to when it overheated. so i was wondering if the heat could have fried something else or what, im still pretty clueless.

thanks...

Your guess is as good as mine from this point on.. Most laptops are pretty resillient though.. Hope you get it figured out.. Best of Luck!

eGo

It's pretty easy when disassembling these things to put the heat pipe back together wrong. Sometimes there's just two pieces of metal touching each other just so, and a slight mis-alignment causes it to overheat.

Dell has quite extensive online service manuals that show step-by-step disassembly and assembly procedures. I'd go to the support section of their website and download them if you haven't yet. There may be some trick (a flap or something) that you have to watch for when you assemble it.

Last resort, look for a Mom & Pop computer shop (stay away from the big chain stores) that works on lappies and have them look at it.