My older Dell Inspiron laptop has a blinking light only, please help!

**AliceInWonderland** · December 16th, 2008, 12:43 PM

im scared, it only has a blinking light when i turn it on and the irony is, is that i was going to start backing it up this week and now this; i just hope its not totally fucked, i need everything on it! should i take it to Geek Squad? cant they just take the component out and put it in another computer and upload all my shit to I-Drive or something for me to download on another machine?!!!

HELLO? ANYONE OUT THERE????????????

**swwave** · December 16th, 2008, 12:49 PM

Have the battery checked, also I had that happen with the blinking light and the charger was no good, once I got a new one it was fine. I would suggest having it looked at, I have an older dell inspiration and it is getting slow I think time for a new battery.

**AliceInWonderland** · December 16th, 2008, 12:52 PM

omg thank you! thank you so fucking much!!!!

that is really good news actually compared to the worst, i will do this, it'll cost me but its better than losing all my shit on there and then of course ill back up!

**swwave** · December 16th, 2008, 12:59 PM

Let me know if it was the battery or charger, it shouldn't have crashed unless it was dropped or had a major virus.

**AliceInWonderland** · December 16th, 2008, 01:18 PM

yeah i know, although it is old....and virus? well i didnt get around to downloading a new virus protector but i never download shit on that computer b/c its so old and slow to begin with. damnit!

**Corsair** · December 16th, 2008, 01:54 PM

the data on your hard drive can be saved if the hard drive is not bad, but they usually charge a lot for it. Being a geek, I bought an adapter to plug laptop hard drives into my regular machine to virus scan/save data for people. Too bad you're not in Sac Alice, I'd fix you up!

**AliceInWonderland** · December 16th, 2008, 01:56 PM

whats Sac?! gawd, i wish i were a geek, im like the dumbest fucktard you ever saw with computers, its actually quite depressing to feel so inadequate.

**Corsair** · December 16th, 2008, 02:10 PM

LOL It's SACRAMENTO. That smoggy town up north of you about 8 hours or so.

**AliceInWonderland** · December 16th, 2008, 02:11 PM

oh right

but really its pretty fucking depressing when all u kno about computer is how to turn them on and off. i guess you learn by doing with them, but damnit wtf?! should i take classes or something?

**Algernon** · December 16th, 2008, 02:23 PM

I don't have an Inspirion, it's a Latitude, but the same thing happened to me. My dh had to reload all of my programs, but the harddrive was still in tact, nothing was lost. I hope you figure it out!! Do you have any techy friends? Geek Squad is SUCH a ripoff for quick fixes like that.

**AliceInWonderland** · December 16th, 2008, 02:30 PM

^ i kno, so wtf should i do? where should i go?

**Algernon** · December 16th, 2008, 02:36 PM

Ask around to see if anyone you know can do basic shit like this, or knows anyone? I am like you Alice, I am a complete computer retard. If I didn't know anyone, I'd use Geek Squad, they'll get the job done. It's just that a lot of people do seem to know this basic stuff once you get to asking.

I'm going to ask my husband if it's something you could fix yourself...maybe he'd know...

**Corsair** · December 16th, 2008, 02:36 PM

does anything show on the screen when you start it up? Any text, any anything? If it never does anything at all, not a good sign. If it just stops when trying to load windows, not as bad.

ETA If you have any geeky friends, that would know what you meant if you said put my laptop drive in as a slave and copy my data, this cable would help:

Cables To Go - Laptop to IDE Hard Drive Adapter

I got mine at Fry's for about ten bucks.

**AliceInWonderland** · December 16th, 2008, 02:42 PM

the windows logo and shit comes up and it says real quick to press F2 or F12 if i want, but the screen that asks for my password never shows up so it just sits there black with a blinking white cursor instead

thanks again guys btw, i guess im not too upset about spending the money if it can save my ass from my retard mistake! watever i did....

**Corsair** · December 16th, 2008, 02:46 PM

well that's a good sign. Hard drive probably isn't dead. Try tapping F8 as it boots up, can take you into safe mode, which loads minimal stuff but maybe if it works you can see if your stuff is still there. If it works, DON'T PANIC when a bunch of white text flies by. It's supposed to do that. Hopefully you can get your important stuff onto flash or CD and if you want, you can reinstall Windows. (What are you running? 98? ME? XP?)
Shop will charge minimum 100/150 just to look at your machine.