Dell Latitude D620 won't start.

[Ulthraun]

I'm a amateur computer guru that decided it would be smart idea to try and clean up the inside of a co-worker's Dell Latitude. I took it apart (struggled to do so), cleaned it with air, put everything back together (Which fitted perfectly and didn't give me any troubles at all), and attempted to power it on. I had recently got a new 12-cell superb 8800mAH battery since the old gen battery failed. I installed the new battery, plugged it in, and when I started it the screen lit up, but remained black. No BIOS beeps, there was a slight delay, and I heard the windows start up, but still nothing was on the screen. So I decided to look up a video to see if I had correctly re-installed the screen.... Welp, I didn't. I put the dark gray wifi (I assume) cable on the video card at the top, and the black on the bottom. So I changed it back to the appropriate way (Yes, I did have the battery removed, and the AC cord unplugged), put the battery back in, plugged it back in and got a 2 beep bios code. So I took the ram out, re-installed it, and once again there wasn't any beep, and the screen was black. To my dismay, the computer feels like it is getting hot quickly where the cpu is which leads me to believe it may need a new one OR new thermal paste. Also, (New development) the screen has now started to change colors between a array of dark green to white, and then back to black. Doing a little research I found this could be a few things, the video card, cables, or even a file to control the temperature of the computer's screen colors (Like red, green, blue, etc.) I haven't touched the laptop since in fright it may cause more damage...
Please someone help me with this quickly, I only have a time frame of about 1-2 weeks... lol

 

[herm0016]

Sounds like you fried the mobo. Are those 2 cables the same density/pin layout? You could have damaged the cable by putting it in the wrong connector. A voltage could have gone where signal should be and that would let the magic smoke out, You cant put that back in. . .


does "the windows" make a sound? do you mean the hard drive spins up or that the startup sound comes out of the speakers?

 

[rsutoratosu]

Buy used one off ebay and give it back... they're fairly cheap. thats your best bet.. just move the hard drive and memory over.. nothing much you can do unless someone else can fix it for free

 

[Aeridyne]

Buy used one off ebay and give it back... they're fairly cheap. thats your best bet.. just move the hard drive and memory over.. nothing much you can do unless someone else can fix it for free

This is a good idea. I have done this before when I've got a nuked laptop & someone wants it fixed, or, I want to fix it up and the shell/mobo has major issues. It really does sound like you nuked the board. Usually with a cpu you can turn it on and it will run for quite a bit before it gets so hot that it shuts down, so I would probably say that thermal paste etc isn't to blame, since it was black screen right off the bat. It would have started to power up normal if you had installed the HS/fan wrong. Unless maybe you didn't connect the fan but sounds like you did, and most will actually start w/o fan connected anyway.

I don't know exactly what you did with those wires, sounds like you were saying you somehow connected wifi leads to the vid card, which would be kinda crazy. But yeah, really sounds like ya did something wrong and shorted something out on the board unfortunately.

You can still try hooking up an external monitor to see if maybe its just the vid cable/connector to the lcd. Prob the chip on the mobo is very unhappy though it sounds like.

 

[Ulthraun]

So I left the power cable in to let the computer charge over night. The screen doesn't change colors anymore. As for the boot-up itself, the monitor lights up, but remains black. It idles for a little bit (about 2-5 minutes), but it does show that it's reading the hardrive. After waiting a bit, it just shuts down like it doesn't have power... No bios beep, nothing, but you can hear everything starting up inside. (i.e the fan, HDD.)

 

[Ulthraun]

You can still try hooking up an external monitor to see if maybe its just the vid cable/connector to the lcd. Prob the chip on the mobo is very unhappy though it sounds like.

I'm actually going to try this, but it won't be until later. I'll end up waking up my gf if I make any noise since she is a light sleeper.

 

[Ulthraun]

Sounds like you fried the mobo. Are those 2 cables the same density/pin layout? You could have damaged the cable by putting it in the wrong connector. A voltage could have gone where signal should be and that would let the magic smoke out, You cant put that back in. . .


does "the windows" make a sound? do you mean the hard drive spins up or that the startup sound comes out of the speakers?

Yea they're all the same layout, you have two cables for the wifi that go to the left of the video card, you have the 24 (I assume, didn't count it) pin connector you plug in, a black, light gray, dark gray cable on the right, two of which has to be plugged into the video card. All the cables are able to plug into the video card, which when I was watching a video on how to safely take it apart and reassemble it, showed what looked like the dark gray one plugged in. When I figured it out that it was incorrectly reassembled I immediately took it back apart and corrected it. That's when I got the array of colors, etc.

 

[Ulthraun]

Welp, just started it again and it gave me the two beep code for missing ram again, and surprisingly, it appears to be still on. (The screen is showing no signal though) The processor isn't getting hot either.

 

[pitz]

Nvidia GPU by any chance? Or just the Intel?

A significant number of Nvidia-chipped laptops from the era developed failures requiring hardware repair (or more realistically, a scrapping of the laptop altogether, since you can have a D630 for $30-$50 these days!).

 

[tcsenter]

Don't discount the battery being the culprit, either, particularly if you went cheap. I have gotten the $18 ~ $30 rebuilt battery specials a few times, and they always seem to have issues with charging to full capacity, and don't power the laptop any longer than the original battery in spite of being advertised as like 30% higher capacity or with more cells.