Dell 2500 problem

nigeloconnor

I have an old Dell Inspiron 2500 that won't boot up. It has been lying idle for over a year because the charging cable gave up. It was working perfect until then, the battery needed charge and the cable broke. I got a new cable and got a charge light and turned on the laptop. It boots up as far as the blue 'Dell' screen - the screen where i get the option to 'Press F2 to enter setup' and it freezes there. If i hit F2 while booting the same blue 'Dell' screen appears and it says 'entering setup' on the bottom but doesn't go any further. I am just wondering if it's the harddrive thats damaged or some else?

Thanks in advance for your help.

partyatmygaff

That sounds like something funny is going on with the motherboard. The best thing is to find the CMOS battery (Looks like a watch battery) and take it out for 5 minutes and put it back, it resets the motherboard.
On an inspiron 2500 though finding that is alot of work. You have to open the laptop and it should be on the motherboard directly underneath the palmrest.
Unless you've opened up laptops before (Not that its particularly hard or anything) I would recommend you get a friend who has done it before.

nigeloconnor

I opened up the laptop, took keyboard, touchpad, monitor etc. off but I couldn't find an little battery on the board.. there isn't much else to remove except the video card (i think). Anyway it is only for the sake of getting it working I went at it in the first place.

Thanks for your help.

duckysauce

try booting it up with out the hard drive in it