dell lattitude d630 - stuck at the splash screen, may have bricked it

[tech-wreck]

i tried upgrading the memory and now the splash screen appears upon pressing the power button. and that's it. someone suggested i need to flash the bios, but i wouldn't know where to look...
if that's the case, where can i find instructions or a video tutorial?

if it's beyond repair.. well, i could use it as a tea tray. silver linings and all that

 

[tman1]

Have you tried reversing the "memory upgrade"?

 

[tech-wreck]

yeah, same result with original memory in.

 

[ex_bubblehead]

How long did you let it sit? Those systems can sometimes seem to hang for long periods of time after a hardware change (such as adding/removing memory). I've seen as long as 30 minutes for the bar to fill.

 

[tech-wreck]

How long did you let it sit? Those systems can sometimes seem to hang for long periods of time after a hardware change (such as adding/removing memory). I've seen as long as 30 minutes for the bar to fill.

five minutes or so. i'll give it a good hour, see if anything happens.

and... what bar?

 

[ex_bubblehead]

The progress bar that appears below the Dell logo during post.

Those laptops will also seem to hang for 5-10 minutes or so at a point just before the progress bar appears and then suddenly present a "press F1 to continue, or F2 to enter setup" screen. This usually happens when the CMOS battery is dead.

 

[tech-wreck]

ah, thanks. i know what you mean, but this one had a modded splash screen without a progress bar (instead it was a static company logo - i thought corporate IT recyclers were supposed to reset stuff like that...)

anyway, should i replace the battery before i let it soak?

 

[ex_bubblehead]

If it's been modded all bets are off. I don't trust recyclers to replace things like CMOS batteries. Quite often they don't even turn them on to see if they even POST. I've received many a PC from such places that are missing such essential things as RAM, and even CPU's. I'd go ahead and replace the CMOS battery on GP.

 

[tech-wreck]

okay, i'll pick one up tomorrow and see if it fires up
cheers

 

[tech-wreck]

well, didn't get a new battery (i been ill), but turning it on and leaving it for a while seems to have worked. cheers

 

[ex_bubblehead]

Sometimes patience is the best virtue Glad it's working now.

 

[tech-wreck]

i had a sudden attack of courage yesterday and did the memory upgrade again ... and ... nothing. no power to the display even ... oops.
opened it up again, checked they were properly seated, put it back together, fired it up and ... boom! started up straight away, splash screen went after a couple of seconds (normal), "system memory has changed, hit F1 to continue..." so i did and it works pretty much perfectly