I need assistance with Dell Laptop.

Ok, so i have a dell laptop that will not boot up, it either gives me a BSOD or it just powers off. I have tried the recovery CD and it just powers off...I have tried safe mode and it does the exact same thing. What really made me throw my hands up is the fact that it wont even boot up with my flash drive that contains linux (I have tried both Mint, fedora and Backtrack 5) ... it just powers off!

I really hope its not a hardware issue but thats what im afraid of...but before i throw in the towel i wanted more opinions. I would appreciate any help with this.

 

have you tried hirens? http://www.hiren.info/pages/bootcd

that has a heap of diagnostic programs and stuff on there, but before you do that try http://www.hdsentinel.com/hard_disk_sentinel_dos.php it scans your hard drive, if that comes up any less then like 90% i would reccoemned just buying a new hard drive before trying anything else

 

Well he doesn't seem to be able to boot to any sort of Live CD so that won't won't work. And besides, I don't think a bad hard drive would cause the computer to power off like that.

It is definitely something hardware related, but I don't know too much about diagnosing a laptop. All I can think of is 1. Bad RAM (BSODS) or 2. something to do with the power supply (again, don't know much about laptops, only desktops).

 

My very first thought is dead RAM. being as how RAM is so cheap, that's the first thing I would look into. Swap it out with some new RAM, and if it still doesnt work...just return the RAM.

Power supply is unlikely. Laptop power supplies either work, or don't work. They don't tend to "start going out", so if your charger is giving the laptop power and charging the battery...you're fine there.

Most likely it's just your RAM, but in the worst case...your motherboard may have crapped. It's unlikely that your CPU is messed up, as on laptops....they shut down way before their absolute thermal "death zone"...and theyre designed to handle much more heat than desktops CPU's.
Depending on your model, motherboards for dells can sometimes be found for fairly low prices on fleabay. But if the laptop is rather low-end...i wouldn't bother.