The laptop is a Dell Latitude C640 or Model no. PP01L
Windows XP, 1 stick of 512 Ram

The laptop was just brought back into commission about 2 weeks ago with the sole purpose of putting programmed designs onto a floppy disk to run in embroidery machines. The floppy drive started acting up so I took it out to do a simple cleaning (I have experience opening up and working on computers so I did a little research on floppy drive maintenance and took every precaution). I also attempted to add a 2nd stick of memory and clean up unused programs and anything else to have it's full potential on simply writing to floppy disks for the embroidery machines. After putting the floppy drive back in and with the 2nd stick of Ram in I attempted to start it and it now will power on (fans, hard drive etc) but the screen won't come on, the Caps lock light blinks and after about 8 seconds it cuts off. I removed the 2nd stick of Ram putting it back to the one stick where it worked fine and pulled the floppy drive out and I still can't get it to start. The battery is new, there was no shock or impact to the laptop while I did these few things, basically nothing I can imagine that would cause this other than the Ram, but for the screen not to come on is really throwing me. As it sits here there is a green light blinking indicating it's plugged into an AC power source, also when it is attempting to start the activity lights on the ethernet port are active. That's about all I can think of.

The reason this older laptop is so vital at the moment...

My fiance's parents own an embroidery business and last week someone broke in and stole items from the business including the main computer that they did the actual design work on and the security key. Right now is their biggest sales time of the year with a lot of shows that they travel to and so the backup is this laptop which works (worked) fine. The Tajima embroidery machines are programmed by floppy disk drives and the security card they have hooks in by the parallel port which this laptop has. To get an updated security device and another computer would cost so much that it's not practical. We have another show in a few days and I can't stress how important it is to get this thing working.

Please let me know if you have any ideas on what to do. Would clearing the CMOS do anything? Thanks so much for your time reading this and any suggestions that may get this machine working again to make it through a few shows.

Regards.

10/22/2012 9:08:04 PM

Buy another old used lappy with a parallel port

Recover the hard drive if necessary

10/23/2012 12:52:46 AM

Those old C640's have notoriously bad ram slots. Leave the cover off and push down on the top of the ram module slightly, while doing that power on the laptop. If it works that way, you can put a rubber spacer in the ram card cover so it pushes the ram down.

Worst case scenario bring it to me, I worked on tons of those back in the day and I'm pretty sure I have a box of spare parts around.

10/23/2012 2:14:56 AM