jakethesnake

Hi again Yes I am getting faint picture very hard to see info on screen. If it is failed backlight is it an easy fix? Tried tapping f8 got series of options difficult to see but going by earlier post from you tried factory image restore but still a faint picture showing windows vista some info i cant make out and dell logo. Managed to see folloe on instuctions and its going through initial run through as first time use but still with faint screen. I assume this confirms backlight failure. It has now bing bonged and has come up with the getting started screen. Will leave it at this stage and await a reply. Many thanks for your help and support Jakethesnake

Just tried what you suggested but no boot up. power lights are glowing!! so there should power?

Hi Jelly Bean Thanks for your patience, dont have the original 512mb card so cant try that at the present time. will try and get an answer from dell. Regards

Hi Jelly Bean Have been trying to start it up tonight with no luck black screen not even dell logo coming on initial start up. Know its firing up as tried the dell diagnostics and got the beeps. can only get black screen so cannot see anything to do commands. What is CHKDSK and how do i start it ? Am bit of a dummy when it comes to this stage. How do I restore to factory settings if i have black screen? how do i do Memtest? computer shop installed the larger memory card when i had problems last year they didnt say to uprate both cards so I didn't know they needed to be the same. Used a trick I saw on this site last night to boot up which worked but not tonight, ctrl alt D Regards jakethesnake

Hi new to the site although have read anumber of posts. one similar to my own problem. operating system Dell6400 windows vista, ram was 2x512mb now has 1x1gb 1x512mb. think hard drive is 120gb samsung. Initially thought computer was dead but after continually shutting down and restarting got it to boot up. have run MBMA which cleared 36 infections and also run a pc health check which showed 350 items that need adressing one of which was a physical problem with the hard drive. I assume this is what is causing the system to fail to boot up. Is this terminal or can it be solved by a clean up programme or is it better to invest in a new hard drive? I have run the dell diagnostics and although i cannot see everything on the screen it beeps on the quick test and shows hard drive problem. All help gratefully received Regards Jakethesnake