My Dell Latitude Cpx is failing to boot.?

Question

For starters, I am using a hand-me-down laptop (a Dell Latitude CPx). It worked fine for a short period of time other than the occasional, random power down.

Recently, I have abandoned using it altogether since I can not get it to power on. It is hooked up to an external power source, and I've alternated that source several times. It seems to be the previous problem on a larger scale. It will not boot up or recognize an external source. The times it does, though, the light for power comes on and I'll hit the power button. It will boot normally, but then shut back off within seconds and again fail to recognize electricity. Help?

Thanks for your time,

Jack

Answer 1

It's either your power cable/power adapter, a bad power connector on the motherboard, or a bad CPU/CPU fan. I had a dell inspiron something or another and my power connector on my motherboard broke so it would not turn on unless I had it a certain way but as soon as I moved it or bumped it, it would shut back off. If it doesn't power on, I'd say get rid of the Dell and go with something more reliable like HP, Toshiba, or Sony (just to name a few) Look on ebay or tigerdirect, or hp/gateway/etc for used laptops. Good luck with fixing the hunk of junk from Dell.

Answer 2

Three different things could be going on.

1) You could have a bad battery, or a bad cable to the external power source. If the battery in the laptop is bad, or the cable then this could happen.

2) The on and off is a setting on lap tops, for it to charge or what ever (brother had same problem). I highly doubt that it's this but just throwing it out there.

3) You could have corrupted your registry. If you have Nortorn Anti-virus, your registry could have been corrupted. Even with out Nortorn you could have done it accidently. This would cause it not to be able to start up, probably not power up though.

Most likely you have a bad battery and need to seek help by either Best Buy or Dell it self. Usually they have a tech center at the place you purchased it at for these type of problems, I'd suggest seeing them. (If not then you can buy a new battery, its one of those little circle kind, that are hard to tell apart)

Answer 3

Possibilities:

Your battery could have a short. Remove the battery and see if it boots while on wall power.

You may have an overheating problem, but replacing the fan on a laptop is nontrivial.

You may have a failed power controller. Replacing it may require professional help.

Try booting a bootable CD, just to make sure it's nothing on your hard drive.