Help! I can't turn on my Dell Latitude D410. When I press the power button, the 3 green lights come on for a few seconds, but then they go off again. I've tried it with and without the docking station and with and without the battery. If I hold the Function key while I power up, the "arrow lock" light (on the right) stays on for a few seconds before it turns off. I think it's a bad motherboard, but I'm hoping it's something easier to fix. (This all began when I made the mistake of removing it from the dock without powering down. It worked fine while it was out, but when I tried to redock, it turned off. And then I couldn't turn it back on.) It seems to be a power issue (motherboard-related?) as far as I can tell; I think the rest of the hardware is OK. Can you confirm whether that sounds like the motherboard or something simpler? If it is the motherboard, is it worth fixing? (It's several years old.) Please let me know if you need more info about what happened or what I've tried. Thank you!
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Couple thoughts-
It does sound like the motherboard went bad when you did this. Since you were docking/undocking when this happend flip over the laptop and see if there are any bent pins or if there is a foreign object in the docking port hole.
to the other experts- is there a way to reset the pram on a dell? On compaq, it was hold the c key or something screwy like that.
pram is the was the wrong word,
I think i know what your problem is but, I can't find the solution even in a google search. Call dell and they will have you remove the battery from the machine then boot it while holding a combination of key(s) on ac power. These keystrokes are not the normal ones like f12, f8, etc. Get your express service code before you call.
@Philonator - Unfortunately, it's no longer under warranty, so I don't think I can call Dell. They did help me a bit via text/chat support, but they just said it was the motherboard without much further explanation. They didn't mention any keystrokes to try. The only thing I've found reference to is holding down the Function key while powering up to show the error codes (arrow-lock key). The Dell person said that was consistent with a bad motherboard, though only after *I* raised the issue.
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by: tim1731Posted on 2009-08-28 at 04:38:55ID: 25206498
Try taking out the battery and power and holding down the power button to drain any remaing power (10- 15 secs) battery back in and power on