Can a laptop just die?

[Guiguille]

Hi,

I had for 3 years a Dell Inspiron 1464. When I bought a newer one, I sold it. This laptop never gave me problems in those 3 years, it always worked fine (kudos to Dell). The thing is, that 20 days after selling it, the buyer calls me saying that the notebook just died, and it can't be turned on. My question is, is there a way that the laptop had a previous failure that caused it's death? Or it must be something the new buyer did? Because I can't think of any cause that wouldn't affect the notebook's performance (everything worked more than ok when I sold it) before having such a general failure.

Any feedback will be appreciated.
Thanks

 

[RealBeast]

Hi,

I had for 3 years a Dell Inspiron 1464. When I bought a newer one, I sold it. This laptop never gave me problems in those 3 years, it always worked fine (kudos to Dell). The thing is, that 20 days after selling it, the buyer calls me saying that the notebook just died, and it can't be turned on. My question is, is there a way that the laptop had a previous failure that caused it's death? Or it must be something the new buyer did? Because I can't think of any cause that wouldn't affect the notebook's performance (everything worked more than ok when I sold it) before having such a general failure.

Any feedback will be appreciated.
Thanks

Yes, at three years or so you can have the HDD or the battery die, along with other stuff. The HDD would be the most common, but you can usually get a monitor with a flashing cursor or a boot message. Does it work when plugged in?

I would not say that it was something you did or maybe not even something the buyer did, parts sometimes just die over time due to heat and use.

 

[Guiguille]

No, it doesn't turn on. That's the strange part. Any other component, I could say that it stopped working because of time, but dying like that?