Black screen of death? Need advice!

So I've had my Dell Inspiron 1420 for almost two years now. It's great and I love it, but last night when I was playing World of Warcraft the screen all of a sudden turned black. There was no sound from the game, no mouse cursor, nothing, but the computer was still on. So I press and hold on the power button to restart it, only to find ANOTHER black screen. No windows logo, no option to press F12 to boot in safe mode, no loading screen, nothing.

My computer wasn't very hot at the time (only been playing for 10 minutes and it was off for a few hours). The only thing out of the ordinary that I did to it in the past week or so was update my graphics driver from the NVIDIA website. It's been working flawlessly so I don't think it's the problem, but who knows.

I have a three year warranty on this thing so I could call and send it in, but I would like to know what other people think. It seems as if it could either be the screen that just up right died or the graphics driver. I've tried to restore Vista with the CDs, but since it just shows a black screen always, I'm pretty much stuck.

 

Try draining method
1. Shutdown computer or hard shudown by pressing power button on computer for a few seconds.
2. Unplug power.
3. Remove battery.
4. invert the computer and press and hold power button for 30 seconds.

This will drain any remaining power. Now start and see if it starts. Otherwise try it again.

If it doesnt even show lights etc or if it still doesnt start, it is certainly a GPU/Motherboard problem. In that case you would send it for repair, thats a costly repair, but it is covered by warranty so you are safe.

I hate Nvidia since my last HP laptop died in 2.5 years , after warranty expired, and Nvidia had published that the GPU i had was prone to failure .. Why make something that will fail and not replace it immediately. They extended warranty for 1 year, and said they will replace for those who have failures, and those who dont repent and wait till it fails and once it fails after the 1 year extension, no further options left !!! - Cost for repair about 450$ excluding shipping etc.

 

Just finished a Dell support chat session, and apparently my motherboard is the problem. They will be sending a technician out in two days, along with the new board, and he/she will replace it for me at my house. I gotta say, this is the first time I've had to deal with customer service, and it was very awesome.

 

Same thing I thought until they tried repairing it, I didn't know what hit me, they took 2 weeks to send a technician and when I sent it to the depot they sent it back worst than when I sent it in. I hope you don't have to go through my ordeal. Good Luck with your repairs.

 

Be VERY careful with DELL support, and if you have "at home" service, insist on using it. There are NUMEROUS horror stories on this, and other, forums where a DELL owner would send the notebook into depot for repair, only to have it return in shambles. At-Home service is something that can always be added to an active warranty to help ensure that your laptop doesn't have to leave its home for service. Also, DELL's idea of 2 days can be very different than yours... it can mean a technician will be there in 2 days, or that the technician will be notified in 2 days and supplied with the part, and after that it's up to the tech what happens. Also, some techs have even destroyed computers because the tech wants to do it as quickly as humanly possible... without regard for if the fix actually works. It's in part because being a tech is not an easy job, and the commission per job is somewhere around $30 / job (where I am in NY, anyway)... and if it's a major job such as a mobo replacement, that could equal a wage below minimum.

What some people will do is they will finagle a DELL rep to send the part to the owner's house and then put the part in alone. This may or may not void the warranty depending on if you can do the job correctly, but sometimes, doing the work yourself and ensuring it's done right works better than having someone who could potentially be a putz doing it for you. (This isn't to say there aren't good DELL techs out there, there are... but from what I've seen, the number of DELL techs who actually do their job with pride is dwindling.) The idea though of doing it one's self usually works with smaller parts like a GPU, a mobo may well best be left to the tech, as if the mobo dies during installation or is DOA you'll have recourse to get another replacement, which may put you one step closer to a full computer replacement.

Best of luck and keep us posted!

Jason

 

Keep in mind, the idea with dealing with dell support IS NOT TO get a BRAND NEW computer going in. If they screw up, then of course you should aim for that. It really depends on the contracted tech.

 

Ok well bad news. My laptop is still broken
A dell technician came out a few days after I called with a new motherboard, replaced it, and everything was great for the first 10 minutes. But RIGHT after he left, the thing started to crash over and over. I called him back but he couldn't do anything because he was only there to replace the motherboard. I would have to call customer support for additional help

The technician thinks it is either overheating or there is something in the new board that is making it shut off. For those who are interested, this is a different problem than my one before. NOW, I can see the dell logo and the desktop, but as soon as I try to open a program, BAM it crashes.

So, tomorrow I'll call again explaining my situation and they'll probably send a new guy out with a replacement fan or CPU or WHATEVER! Gah, this is horrible

*edit* I was wondering when the best time would be to start nudging for a replacement. I don't even know if they still even MAKE this model hah, but thank god this is covered under my warranty, or otherwise I would have tossed this thing, cut my losses, and just went out to buy a new one.**

 

have u changed ur ram recently?

 

No I haven't changed my memory at all.

But today another dell tech came to my house with a new heatsink, fan, and hardrive. And after a long day of updating, this thing is finally normal again. The GPU temps are still a tad too high for my tastes, but dell has been bending over backward for me so I'm extremely grateful. I still have a warranty for another 500 days so I'll just see how it goes from here.

 

I think your main board was down that would caused the black screen problem!