No Power on Dell Inspiron 6400

[allanc]

A client has brought in a Dell Inspiron 6400 that will not power up.
The green light on his power adapter lights up when plugged in.
I have tried a known to be good power adapter - same thing.
No power when I use a good battery and no power adapter.
Basically, there is not even a flicker of activity when I press the power button.
All suggestions are appreciated.
Thanks in advance.

 

[repairit]

Prob. the main board is shot. Had a few recently like this. Have you tried AC and no battery?

 

[allanc]

Prob. the main board is shot. Had a few recently like this. Have you tried AC and no battery?

Yes, with both his power AC and my own.

 

[Peaceful]

May be stating the obvious, but have you tried bleeding the caps down? Used to see about one of these a day when doing time at the big box store.

 

[allanc]

May be stating the obvious, but have you tried bleeding the caps down? Used to see about one of these a day when doing time at the big box store.

Not so obvious as I have never attempted board level work.

 

[shamrin]

May be stating the obvious, but have you tried bleeding the caps down? Used to see about one of these a day when doing time at the big box store.

What do you mean by "bleeding the caps down?"

/sch

 

[Peaceful]

Removing all power and holding the power switch to dissipate any residual charge in the capacitors. Sort of like a reset function in the event of logic lockups.

 

[MrUnknown]

Removing all power and holding the power switch to dissipate any residual charge in the capacitors. Sort of like a reset function in the event of logic lockups.

sounds stupid, but I fixed a computer yesterday by doing this.

I still don't get it.

 

[PcTek9]

Sometimes it is the ESCD. That just means extended system configuration data. It's your computers way of remembering "hey i chose this configuration for all the pci cards and it worked."

So it saves all that info.

But sometimes it gets confused if hardware changes occur live that don't get written to the escd.

When it gets confused the system just sits there thinking it is on, when it's actually off. So holding the power key in forever with the power - and unplugging the system simultaneously - usually drains the juice so the ESCD gets reset.

See... on atx psu's when you press the pwr button the pc, it sends a message to bios escd area, which passes that message from the bios across escd into the operating system. If the operating system is ready then it shuts down, otherwise it gets ready then shuts down.

The problem is when that data becomes corrupted you have to reset it, by pressing and holding the pwr button, until the system sends a reactivate signal through the bios to clear the escd power status.

 

[maclaptech]

Most likely it is a bad mobo...

 

[allanc]

Removing all power and holding the power switch to dissipate any residual charge in the capacitors. Sort of like a reset function in the event of logic lockups.

Oh yes, I did that (no success).
I thought you were referring to some sort of board level work.

 

[allanc]

Removing all power and holding the power switch to dissipate any residual charge in the capacitors. Sort of like a reset function in the event of logic lockups.

I just noticed that the two screws that lock the hard drive in place are missing.
Do you think that it is possible that the hard drive has been moving around somewhat (and now damaged) and that could be the problem?