The dell Inspiron 5150 will not start with the AC plugged in (everything powers up but a white cursor blinks on the top left corner.) It works on battery so I thought the difference could be that the cpu speed is slower on power saving. Turned speedstep off and now I can start even with the AC plugged in. Problem: regardless of the bios setting, during winXP installation (actually when it auto installs the drivers) I think it loads the speedstep driver and the laptop freezes instantly! Am I totally off? Don't ask the story of the laptop, I just got it like that... sniff Any ideas?
Does it freeze with the CPU speed up or down. I think its just overheating. Try taking it apart and cleaning the fans and reseating the heatsinc. 3.06 P4s emmit a lot of heat, over that, yours is in a laptop.
Thanks for your answer! Well it freezes before booting the bios! When the speed is up. In this laptop's bios when you put speedstep off, it turns the speed down to 1.6GHz (makes kinda sens for a laptop) Now I found a newer firmware, made a dos boot cd and flashed the bios. Then restarted tried to enable speedstep, didn't work! only difference now is that even on battery I can't boot the bios anymore! In this version the cpu speed must be 3GHz on startup even on battery. I'm locked out!! I'm gona try opening and cleaning like you said :/
Definitely dead... I could try to find another cpu... I'm not sure if it's worth it... anywayz thanks
The heatsync was on properly but completely filled with dust! So I'm pretty sure the cpu is fried! It's the first time thou that i find a cpu that will work at low speed without speedstep on but not at all not even half a second at full speed. Is that possible or does it mean the problem must be somewhere else (motherboard)...
I'm really not sure. Did the fans always hit high speed. It could be that the CPU was fried. You could try another CPU if you want since it'll probably be cheaper than a new motherboard. What does it do now?
