Inspiron 8600 trouble

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mrkram

Gawd
Joined
Sep 4, 2005
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564
Let me start off by saying i just recently joined the [H]ard|Forums after hearing about [H]ardOcp at this years quakecon and being impressed with their show. :)
Now onto buisness.

Several months ago my girlfriends father freaked out and went incredible hulk on her laptop, i built her a desktop replacement pushing the laptop to the side for some time. I just recently cracked the laptop open. Nothing besides the hinges holding the monitor seems to be broken and some of the enclosure holding the motherboard, but no major hardware damage besides the display. This is the first laptop ive ever worked with and am usually ok with working on desktops.

I can get the system to turn on (with ac power, the battery alone will not power the system), then wierd things start happening. The videocard (not sure what model it is, think geforce 5650go) fan shuts off, as does the fan next to the processor, the hard drive makes a loud repetitive clicking noise(broken i assume), then after about 10 seconds or so i get 2 short beeps, *beep-beep*. Nothing happens after that except for the continueous hard drive clicking sound. Any solutions and or ideas offered would greatly be appreciated as i am on a very tight budget and really can't afford to use another box for a dedicated quake 4 server. The questions i have are:

1) What do the 2 beeps mean. I tried to find out what bios the 8600 inspiron uses but the technical documentation from dells website does not say.
(http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/ins8500/en/8500/OM/8600/i8600-om.pdf)

2) If I cannot find out what the 2 beeps mean I can only assume the system is irrepairable. My only options after this is to strip it down and sell off the parts, does that sound right?

Also I would like to mention i have already reseated the hard drive, ram, and videocard(i think it was the videocard, the monitor cable plugged into it and it also had a nvidia label on it so i dont think it could of been anything else). I was going to reseat the processor but felt it would be better to wait to make sure all other solutions had been explored first.

Thanks again for any ideas or solutions.
 
First off.. Welcome to the forums!

Secondly.. The warranty on these systems is often good. See if it's still possible to send it back to Dell.

As any Dell owner will tell you, it is often possible to get significantly more service done to your system than is listed in the warranty as long as when you call you say as little as possible and simply stick to your guns and say "it's broken". I had a 1 year limited warranty on my i8600 and spilled a whole pint of beer directly into the keyboard (never take your laptop to a bar, folks). I called up Dell and simply told them it wasn't working. Nothing more nothing less. They picked it up in an hour and I had my system back in a couple days fully repaired.

So before trying any repairs, see if you can flex the service/warranty muscle. Just don't mention what happened.. :)
 
While this sounds like good advice for most situations, i must say i dont think it would apply here. First off the laptop was literally stomped on by my girflfriends outraged father, the display was nearly ripped off entireley not to mention some keys popped out. To say the least the laptop looks like it got dropped out of a car. I could reasemmble it though if you dont think that would matter...hmmm. Thats pretty awsome you got your 8600 back, cheers!
 
mrkram said:
any ideas from anyone?? im still stumped : <
Click to expand...
"It's broken"
Dell CSRs really have quite a bit of latitude with what they can authorize, and they WILL go the extra mile to try to make you happy.
If they don't fix it what have you lost? A half hour on the phone? Not a real big risk imho.
 
ok i will try to reassemble the beast and see what dell can do for me, if not then look for some laptop parts on the fs/ft section : >. thanks for the advice, greatly appreciated
 
Threads like this make me hate people. :mad:

If you didn't get complete care, Dell's most likely not going to help you.

Repetative clicking = Hard drive heads are damaged and it cannot find the home position. Basically it can't track where the heards are, you're hearing them slam repeatedly into the drive casing.

Fans stop spinning = Normal, they should start spinning once everything starts heating up

Two beeps = Hard to say, laptop mobos don't use standard beep codes. Did you connect a monitor to the external conneciton? If you don't get a display I'd say the graphics chip is fried, most likely from motherboard trauma.

Bottom line Daddy had an expensive tantrum.
 
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