Inspiron 9100 Laptop Display

texas_yankee · Joined: Sep 03, 2004 Posts: 27

I have a 2 year old Inspiron 9100 laptop that has never given me any problems what so ever for a bit over 2 years. I travel quite a bit for construction projects so I rely on my machine heavily for photo processing and AutoCad for blueprints. Inspiron 9100, P4 2.8 128 video card 1.768 RAM wsx 15.4 display screen.
It was left on in my office since I keep it synced with my desktop. I went home and back in the next day to pack it up for a trip. I booted into safe mode, ran disk cleanup and then defrag on both drives. Once completed I restarted it before the shut down but when it was booting up the screen came on, then off, then on, then a flicker, then poof...gone. Reboot, nothing, insert xp pro disk for a repair possibly. I can not see anything so I have no idea what is booting up, if anything.
Okay..buy a new drive and new xp pro oem disk, fresh start. Still nothing.
Thing is, if it is the proprietary video card what am I going to have to spend on repairs or worse if the display screen is shot. I have never had any bad dealings with Dell and have purchased both laptops and desktops since the mid 90's but I have not sent anything in for a diagnosis either. Will I get robbed given that the origional purchase date was 8-2004 and the industry is always growing. Do i spend it on this laptop which cost a tad over $2900.00 or do I bite the bullet and go new again?
These are my ponders and I seek knowledge for you fine people.

Thanks,
Art Confused

zlim · Joined: Mar 11, 2005 Posts: 2422

See if an external display hooked to it shows anything - if it does, the display on the laptop is gone. Once you know the exact problem, you can research to see what it would cost to fix and decide if it is worth it or better to buy another laptop.

goretsky

Hello,

My initial thought is that the ribbon cable which runs between the systemboard beneath the keyboard and LCD display panel in the lid might be loose. If that is the case, then ZLim's suggest to try it with an external monitor would help diagnose this scenario.

You may also wish to remove all customer-accessible parts (hard disk drive, optical drive, memory, mini-PCI cards and so forth), clean everything with a photo brush, blow out the now-empty connectors and expansion bays and air vents on the Dell Inspiron 9110 notebook computer with a can of compressed air and then reassemble everything.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky