Laptop won't POST

[AncientPC]

My laptop (Dell Inspiron 6000, out of warranty) was plugged in and idling. The screen blacks and wouldn't respond so I do a hard reset.

Afterwards I couldn't bring the laptop back up. The power light was on and upon startup I would hear the hdd and cd-rom power up. However there was no POST screen and no beeps.

I then tried booting off battery and thinking it was possibly the video card plugged in an external monitor. Nothing works.

I later drove home and tried one more time to boot and the laptop works fine now but I'm afraid to turn it back off. Can anyone think of a good reason why I couldn't turn on my laptop earlier?

 

[oynaz]

Moisture? Was it in a hot and/or humid room?

 

[AncientPC]

No moisture, it was in a cool, dry office on top a clean desk.

 

[Nocturnal]

Have you tried removing the battery entirely? On top of that, try removing one stick of memory if there are two total. If there is just one then try swapping it out with a known good one.

 

[AncientPC]

Yes, I did try removing the battery entirely for a minute.

I didn't try removing the RAM because I didn't have a screwdriver handy. But in my experience with RAM problems the mobo will still POST and beep.

However I think with laptops that there doesn't exist a PC speaker and it's driven through the onboard sound card. I'm not sure if a mobo will ever actually beep in POST.