I have a dell inspiron 2650 laptop. I was on the net the other day and
it locked up on me. I was forced to do a hard reboot. After it
rebooted, I was able to get back on the net for a moment and then it
locked up again. Again I had to do another hard boot. this time I
barely reached the windows screen and it locked up again. Thinking that
I may of caught a virus, I inserted my antivirus disk and rebooted. The
screen came up and asked me if I would like to boot off of the c/d or
the hard drive. I chose the c/d. The anti virus did a quick, and by
quick I mean under 2 seconds, scan of my system and then reported no
virus found. I then rebooted my system and now the power light comes on
saying that the system is on, the screen is completly black, no
backlight no nothing, the hard drive indicator flashes sor a fraction
of a second, the floppy drive engages, also for a fraction of a second
and the cpu fan runs for about 2 seconds. After that the whole computer
is dead with the exception of the power icon light staying on. Could
this be a bios problem? If so can flashing the bios fix it, and how? Or
a possible motherboard? Any help with this would be a great help. Thank
you for your time in advance!!!

shawn.sullivan@usmc.mil wrote:
> I have a dell inspiron 2650 laptop. I was on the net the other day and
> it locked up on me. I was forced to do a hard reboot. After it
> rebooted, I was able to get back on the net for a moment and then it
> locked up again. Again I had to do another hard boot. this time I
> barely reached the windows screen and it locked up again. Thinking that
> I may of caught a virus, I inserted my antivirus disk and rebooted. The
> screen came up and asked me if I would like to boot off of the c/d or
> the hard drive. I chose the c/d. The anti virus did a quick, and by
> quick I mean under 2 seconds, scan of my system and then reported no
> virus found. I then rebooted my system and now the power light comes on
> saying that the system is on, the screen is completly black, no
> backlight no nothing, the hard drive indicator flashes sor a fraction
> of a second, the floppy drive engages, also for a fraction of a second
> and the cpu fan runs for about 2 seconds. After that the whole computer
> is dead with the exception of the power icon light staying on. Could
> this be a bios problem? If so can flashing the bios fix it, and how? Or
> a possible motherboard? Any help with this would be a great help. Thank
> you for your time in advance!!!

thanks for all of the great help I received here!!!!
shawn.sullivan@usmc.mil wrote:
> I have a dell inspiron 2650 laptop. I was on the net the other day and
> it locked up on me. I was forced to do a hard reboot. After it
> rebooted, I was able to get back on the net for a moment and then it
> locked up again. Again I had to do another hard boot. this time I
> barely reached the windows screen and it locked up again. Thinking that
> I may of caught a virus, I inserted my antivirus disk and rebooted. The
> screen came up and asked me if I would like to boot off of the c/d or
> the hard drive. I chose the c/d. The anti virus did a quick, and by
> quick I mean under 2 seconds, scan of my system and then reported no
> virus found. I then rebooted my system and now the power light comes on
> saying that the system is on, the screen is completly black, no
> backlight no nothing, the hard drive indicator flashes sor a fraction
> of a second, the floppy drive engages, also for a fraction of a second
> and the cpu fan runs for about 2 seconds. After that the whole computer
> is dead with the exception of the power icon light staying on. Could
> this be a bios problem? If so can flashing the bios fix it, and how? Or
> a possible motherboard? Any help with this would be a great help. Thank
> you for your time in advance!!!

I'd check RAM slots first off. Pull one stick at a time and try
booting.. If it doesnt help yell back.