C840 Laptop Powers to a Blinking cursor

Computer Forum General Hardware
1

The title says it mostly. I have a C840 Dell Laptop and when I turn it on the screen lights up and theres a blinking cursor in the upper left corner. It never gets to the Dell screen and doesn’t seem to do much. It does check the DVD drive a few times, but then it just sits there.

If I hold down the F12 Key and press the power button, it flashes the battery light like the battery is dead, and does nothing else. But when I let go of the F12 Key all of the systems fans spin up for a second then the laptop goes quiet.

I’m just wondering if anyone has any ideas where to start. I’m hopeing the laptop is not dead (the fact that it comes up at all is encouraging). I am free to take the system apart if need be. I have tried pulling the battery out and letting it sit for a while. No Change. Any and all ideas are welcome.

I see this is in the wrong section at the moment.. Mods plz move it if it needs to be moved! Thanks.

2

Quite a few laptop bios’s seem to have mouse pointers (my laptop bios one too :P).

I think your going to have to re-flash your bios, have a look through google trying searches like “C840 bios flash” and “how to flash c840 bios”

i would do it for you, but i have to get some sleep (Test tomorrow)

3

How would I flash the bios when I can’t get to the boot menu to select a CD or Floppy?? It never gets to the dell screen.

4

If your BIOS has a boot block then you should be able to flash a new image onto it.

The DVD drive spinning up is a good sign, the BIOS is (hopefully) checking for
a new image.

You can download burnable iso images from THIS site, just search for c840 when you on that page

[OT]
I aced that test, best mark out of our class :slight_smile:

I do feel dirty though, it was a Microsoft Certification :confused:
[/OT]