Dell Ispirion 1521

Hi, Just wondering if anyone can help with the following. I have been given a friends laptop to have a look at which i was told had a small liquid spillage onto the keyboard area. All the buttons seem fine on the keyboard and there is no evidence of the spillage but when I plug it in and press the power on button the Numeric lock blue light (far left of the three) lights up and stays on and the other two keyboard status lights next to the numeric lock light blink 45 times and then all three lights go out. There is no fan noise absolutely nothing and nothing on the display. The power light does come on on the right hand side display when hitting the power on and the battery light comes on when the battery is inserted. I have tried with and without the battery present and it makes no difference. The charger has been checked and is working fine. I have taken out the keyboard completely and this also makes no difference. Just wondering if anyone has any clues as to the light sequence indicating a particular fault so i have some idea where to start. Any help would be greatly appreciated. thanks in advance Gary

Hi and welcome to the WTT forums.

Sorry to hear of the problems with the Dell Inspiron1521
This doesn't sound too good, liquid ingress is a major cause of "laptop mortality"
An Inspiron 1521 keyboard is cheap to replace, but often the liquid seeps down onto the motherboard, and if it shorts it out… then often its "kaput".
The usual steps here are to:
1 check RAM modules, remove and replace after cleaning contacts ( Don't forget to disconnect mains power (pull out the plug) and remove the battery before opening the cover plates. Take all recommended ESD (anti static) precautions…(Ram is easily damaged by ESD)
2 on powering up, listen and feel for any fans spinning up and or vibrations from the hard drive
3 Try connecting an external monitor to the VGA port on the laptop and then powering up
4 If you have access to a mobo tester, then try and get a fault code from it
5 If you don't have a mobo tester, then connect an external keyboard, an external monitor and try booting to a live distro of Linux Puppy..
available from here:
http://puppylinux.org/main/index.php?file=…g%20Started.htm
it will come as an ISO so you will need to burn it as an Image to make a bootable disc…. ImgBurn will do this for you, available from here:
http://www.imgburn.com/index.php?act=download
don't try and copy it to CD as it won't work…it must be burnt as an image.
If these steps fail then you are looking at a trip to your friendly neighbourhood competent computer technician's shop for a hands on diagnostic and estimate for repair…..if it needs a new mobo then this is expensive…… it might be best to look at the prices/specs of a new laptop….
Regards
paws

Thanks for the reply. It turns out the problem was the Ram "A" located under the keyboard. I guess the spillage must have gotten through to it. As soon as i popped it out the laptop burst into life…….Couple of keys not responding on boot up so a new keyboard and ram ordered from ebay…. Hope this helps someone else.