BleepingComputer.com: Black/blank Screen At Startup

Hi guys,

I have a dell inspiron 1100 labtop (about 4-5 years old) that I use at home and in my car for datalogging the cars information while driving/racing.

To put it simply, when I start the computer up, it runs, but the screen is black/blank the whole time. Now keep in mind some issues I had previously were the following:

1) while the computer was running, the screen would go blank out of no where. We found out that the harddrive was shot and replaced it.

2) While using my labtop in the car, I'd notice that the screen is not as sturdy as it was brand new...meaning when we'd hit bumps on the road,,,the screen would move slightly due to possibly the hinges not being tight any more? Well anyway, with this movement, I suspected that was one of the reasonings why my screen would all of a sudden go blank/black. Because if I'd use both of my hands to hold the screen so it wouldn't have a chance to move, it seemed like the screen would be ok and not shut off/turn black.

Those were the "beggining" issues before this black screen at startup thing happened. Not sure if they're related or not.

Anyway, now is now, and the screen doesn't light up at all. I see nothing at start up, yet the computer will run until I shut it off manually.

Any info would be appreciated...

Hiya mate, welcome to the forum, hope we can be of some assistance!

Sorry to hear about your problem. It sounds to me that the screen maybe kaput, a quick way to find out is to connect your laptop to a monitor, this way the laptop should hopefully output whats on the laptop to the monitor. Give that a try and see what happens.

If not luck pop back and we'll see what we can do!

Well, I've tried hooking it to other monitors, and nothing works.

The screen is completely black. I've been advised by others to replace the graphics card,,,I did with a cheap one and that didn't work either.

Any other ideas?

Daft question, but have you ensured that all cables and connectors are securely in place? There could be a problem with the connectors on the motherboard.

I'm not sure of your money situation, but would it not be adviseable to buy a 2nd hand laptop and transfer the data from the HDD on your Dell to a 2nd hand machine?

FireKracker, on Sep 13 2007, 04:23 AM, said:

Yeah, i've tried disconnecting and reconnecting everything. Nothing works.

I'm looking to possibly buy a used dell 5100/5150 or another 1100.


I've got another question though. I upgraded my harddrive on my now broke computer, to a ultra ata seagate 160gig. I'm wondering if this hard drive would work with a computer that has a serial ata harddrive? Also is serial ata and SATA the same?


I noticed the dell 5100/5150's have ata hard drives, just like my 1100, but are better performers. Also I could swap my harddrive into one of them as well. Any info on this would be great.

Thanks,
Brent

SATA and Serial ATA are the same.

if your hard disk from your 'redundant' laptop looks like this then it will not fit a laptop that has connections for a SATA hard drive. The hard disk in the image is a 44-Pin IDE Notebook Hard Drive. You can purchase an external drive bay into which you can put your 160GB hard disk (see this link ) and connect it to your new laptop via the USB. Data can be transfered from your 160GB drive to your new laptop + you can then use the external drive as backup!

little info regarding ATA and SATA.

Hope that helps!