Dell Inspiron 6400 issue

kisaragi

So, through a combination of two things I think I may have totalled my laptop as now it won't turn on. It's a 3 years old dell inspiron 6400, running XP, 1 gig RAM, 80gig hard drive etc. Standard set up.

Anyway, it had been having weird issues and had dramatically slowed down overnight, literally. My friend told me it could be a RAM issue, and if I were to just take out the RAM for a few hours it might clear up.

Now earlier today I was cleaning my room when I accidentally spilled some tea on said laptop... Nothing appeared to change except that the battery light went red which has never happened before. I got a bit freaked out and since the whole slowing down, my laptop won't turn itself off, it has some kind of error, I powered it off manually.

So I took out the battery and unplugged it and dried it as I could. It seemed ok, most of the tea seemed to go on the screen. So I decided that now was as good a time as any to do the whole RAM taking out process. So a few hours later I took my RAM out, and put it back in.

But low and behold my computer won't turn on The green light comes on, then goes off a few seconds later... The battery sign went red for the same amount of time the first 3 or 4 times I tried but not now. I've tried with only battery or only A/C etc. I've surmised it's probably one of these issues -

- Tea killed my laptop - Doesn't seem likely as it worked for about 30 seconds - 1 minute til I turned it off after the spill?
- By forgetting to ground myself before touching the RAM I fried it (I remembered you're supposed to do this after I touched it, but I think the chance of this having happend is relatively low?)
- RAM is possibly not in correctly...? Having never done this I'm not actually sure about this one. As far as I can see it's in, but my friend told me if it's even slightly off it won't work. However I don't really have any other visual reference.

So my question is basically, what do you think is wrong with it? Also, most importantly perhaps, if I did fry the RAM with static electricity, will ONLY the RAM be damaged, in which case I could simply buy two new sticks of RAM, or would it have damaged other things too?

Alanstrainor

kisaragi wrote: »

- Tea killed my laptop - Doesn't seem likely as it worked for about 30 seconds - 1 minute til I turned it off after the spill?
- By forgetting to ground myself before touching the RAM I fried it (I remembered you're supposed to do this after I touched it, but I think the chance of this having happend is relatively low?)
- RAM is possibly not in correctly...? Having never done this I'm not actually sure about this one. As far as I can see it's in, but my friend told me if it's even slightly off it won't work. However I don't really have any other visual reference.

You can't rule out anything. But If i were to but my money on one of the above options, i'd choose number 1 unfortunately. Liquids and electronics = V.bad news, even if it was working for 30 seconds after the tea hit it, moisture could have made it's way onto the mobo, turning it back on could've shorted it. I know it's too late now, but if that ever happens again where something electronic gets wet, immediately power off, remove power/batteries, take it apart as much as possible, dry it as much as possible and put it in a hotpress for 4/5 days. Only then try to power it on.
Now back to the problem at hand, i take it you've got 2 512mb sticks of RAM? if this is the case, i would think it would be highly unlikely you fried both. Try reseating the RAM, it's not as hard as your friend makes out, it's quite straight forward on a 6400( I'm typing on one now;) ), at least that "should" rule that out.

kisaragi

Cheers for the reply. And thanks for the future advice, I'll remember it next time! Also bugger if it's the tea I reseated (by which I assume you mean take out and put back in) the RAM like twice but to no avail. Yes it's two 512mb sticks. Hmm... I guess I'll just try reseating it again haha.

lucky-colm

yeah tea will do it

on your computer slowing up you could have picked up a virus also you could try running some like disk defragmetation and emptying out your temporary internet files this often fills up alot of space on your computer you could also upgrade your ram to 2gb a quick visit to the dell website will let you know this if you enter your service tag no. (where it says enter service tag no. here lol)

but iam going to put my money on the whole tea spilling incident having a big bearing on the future of the laptop

kisaragi

So re-re-reseating the RAM didn't change anything. Aye, I guess it was the tea. It's sitting in the hot press now not that that's likely to change anything

In relation to slowing down, it had been slowing down for a while, being 3 years old and whatnot, but it just got dramatically slower one weekend - couldn't run a youtube video without skipping, couldn't run games without a really jumpy performance, took about 20 minutes to turn on instead of 7 or 8. I ran virus scans and freed up a lot of space and defragmented the hard drive etc but to no avail.

My friend has told me there's a kind of dock thing you can plug hard drives into that reads them, but says he didn't know if it worked for laptop hard drives as well as desktop ones. Would anyone know anymore about this? Would be nice if I could salvage some of my stuff! What would happen if I just took my hard drive out and popped it into another (dell inspiron 6400)laptop for example? Or is that being a bit hopeful?