Question:

“I have owned my Vostro 1500 for nearly a year and a half since purchasing it from the Outlet. I have had no problems at all until Sunday night when it just died. No warning. Just dead. I first tried these suggestions found here and elsewhere on the web… Press Fn key while pressing power button, reseat DIMM A & B. No signs of life.

Since the dell vostro 1500 battery is out of warranty I feel like I have nothing to lose, so this morning I took everything apart looking for anything that looked melted or dislodged or overly dusty. Everything looks great. My husband has the same laptop, so I have been able to test the battery and AC adapter and in his and both work fine. One thing I have noticed though is this. When my dell AC adapter is plugged into the wall but not into the computer, the light is green. The second I plug it into the laptop, the light goes out. If I then plug the AC into the good laptop, the green light does not come back on until I separate the AC cord from the adapter (brick part) and plug it back in. This leads me to think that it could be a problem with the DC Power Jack where the AC Adapter is plugged in. But why wouldn’t it still work with the vostro 1500 battery?? Why would that cause it to just shut down mid use? Is there any chance it can be revived? This laptop has been like my right arm. I feel lost without it.

Any thoughts and suggestions are greatly appreciated. I’m out of work, this couldn’t have happened at a worse time. My resume is on that computer! Yes….I know I should have backed it up…”


http://www.diggingshop.com/laptop-battery/dell-vostro-1500.htm
Answer:”

Sounds like your mother board is shot. Looks like it would be something possibly in the power supply section.

As to your data the hard drive may very well be good and you could get an laptop ac adapter to put the drive in and plug it into your husbands computer to be able to access your files.

this is starting to become a pattern with Dell. This is about my 5th product that has had premature failure. First it was issues with the laptop batteries at our company. Then 3 of our Optiplex GX280 systems died with defective capacitors on the mainboard, they replaced the mainboards within the short extended warranty window but then about 6 months later, the new mainboards failed again, same issue – oozing capacitors. By now the extended warranty period was over and they wouldn’t replace them when we called, so we had to toss those. 6 months ago we ordered 30 dell 2208WFP flat panel monitors. Almost all but 3 have died from backlight failure. Luckily they carry a 3 year warranty and dell has replaced all of them with refurbs so far. Now this with the vostro 1500. So after all of this, I have finally made the switch and am now buying strictly HP and some IBM/Lenovo. I just ordered an HP proliant dl380 g5p and I will say it is one top notch piece of hardware. I did have an issue with what HP specs state on their website and what was delivered with the server. (it was missing a dell vostro 1500 laptop battery for the write cache on the RAID card, they promptly shipped out the missing part overnight). At any rate, I contacted dell regarding this vostro 1500 to see about getting it inspected for premature failure/defect. I pretty much got the run-around. First few calls I was transferred to different departments that were closed. When I finally made my case to someone about this laptop, and all the troubleshooting i tried (swapped out mem, replaced dell vostro 1500 battery pack, diff power supply) and how this has to be manufacture defect (I also brought up the Nvidia GPU issue), I was told my only option was to pay a 1 time $49 fee to have him troubleshoot over the phone with me or contact warranty repair at 800-822-8965. I also asked about how I can get an investigation going in to a possible recall or system defect, volunteering to mail my laptop in as it is useless. I was told just to call the warranty repair dept.

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