Inspiron 1545: No boot, no beeps, no screen

Hey Everyone,

I have a Dell Inspiron 1545 running Windows 7 64-bit. It is just over 1 year old which means it is less than 2 weeks out of warranty.

Last week, I went to turn it on out of sleep mode. When I pressed the power button, the power light came on and the fan turned on but the screen did not light up, not even the backlight. When I pressed the power button a second time, the whole laptop powered down again without needing to hold the button for five seconds. I thought it might be stuck from a bad sleep cycle, so I unplugged it and took out the battery, pressed the power button once to clear any stored electricity, and then plugged it back in without battery. Again it would not boot up but after trying 3 or 4 times, *bam*, it just started working again without problem. I could turn it off, boot it up, etc.

Yesterday, sadly, the same thing happened. After a sleep mode, the computer will not boot. This time I followed all the same steps as above without success.

I reseated the memory, as well as testing both modules individually. No change. Even when both sticks were removed, there were no changes.

I removed the hard drive and reseated it, also sadly to no change.

Now, when the power button is pressed, the power light turns on, the fan spins up, the hard drive spins up in its normal way, and the dvd drive blinks. But there is no screen including backlight, no beeps, and nothing else happens.

If I do the diagnostic test of holding the power button down as the laptop is powered on, I get 7 straight beeps without pauses in between or change in length.

I would appreciate any help you could suggest, especially if any of you have run into a similar problem before. Thanks!

Sincerely,

SadLaptop