Inspiron 1100 woes

[AStar617]

Anyone ever had an Inspiron 1100 that blinked the amber battery LED 10 times, and that's it? My friend has one, went to class with it on, came back and it's dead.

Any help appreciated. Couldnt find any decoding info from Dell on the LEDs. I'm thinking system board but hoping not to have to break the ~$500 / "buy a new one" news to him

 

[secondvijai007]

How old is it? If its fairly new, then you shouldnt have any problem contacting dell and obtaining their help. If its between 2-3 years old, you probably only need to get a new battery. Li-ion batteries are designed to last between 500-800 charge cycles, appx. 2 years.

What exactly happened? was the adapter connected when it died? Did you use the right adapter?

 

[AStar617]

Laptop has only been used with the AC adapter it was bought with (I helped him order the system when he first started college, and he's a junior now, so this is just over 2yrs ago). It was powered on and connected to AC power when he went to class, and he came back and met it powered off. I had him try to power on and all it gives is a 1Hz amber blink of the battery LED, ten times (10sec). No difference without the AC power; with the AC plug but no battery, it does absolutely nothing.

This isn't a battery issue... and the laptop is most certainly out of warranty...

 

[TheCanuck]

Sounds like either a power supply issue or motherboard. I know with the Dell desktops if the PSU goes then you'll get a flashing power light and thats all. Does the battery have a gauge on it? i.e. can you tell if it has any juice left? If the battery works fine then obviously it's not the power adapter and probably the board.

You can get them for about $200 and this guy on ebay will do the install for free:

http://cgi.ebay.com/NEW-DELL-INSPIRON-1...7QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

But I'd call dell tech support first to verify that it is the mobo. The other option you have is to strip the laptop apart and sell the parts (screen, cpu, keyboard, drives, battery, memory etc) on Ebay. You could probably get between $300 to 400 for parts. Thats what I would do if my laptop fried and then just get a low-end centrino / celeron-m for about $600. And considering that the 1100 is going for less than $500 on ebay, you're probably much better off just parting it out and buying a new machine.

 

[AStar617]

Ha, I already came across that eBayer, but thought to myself, who's to stop him from swapping out all the other known-good parts with suspects from his shelf during the "free" install? Yes, I have trust issues

The laptop did nothing with no battery installed but on the AC plug. You'd usually expect it to come up no problem even without the battery (and certainly not expect it to go down in the first place due to a battery issue when on AC power). The power supply issue is interesting though... I'll have him see if anyone else has a compatible AC adapter model and see how it fares.

Any other suggestions are appreciated, thanks.