# Dropped Laptop



## kwikfishron (Mar 11, 2010)

So I have a Dell 3520 laptop that got knocked off a table, now all I have is a mostly white and black screen that looks like scrambled up jigsaw puzzle pieces. 

When I hook it up to an external monitor it says "no signal". When I start it after being shut down there's no start up process that I can see, the scrambles screen lights up instantly as soon as I hit the power button. 

Is there any hope or is this thing trashed???


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## Marqed97 (Mar 19, 2011)

I've done that. Mine was destroyed. The screen was shot (obviously) but what I didn't realize was that the hard drive spinning at warp speed really didn't appreciate being smacked into the floor at terminal velocity. I couldn't recover anything off of it (fortunately I had previously backed-up anything important). 

For your sake I hope it's recoverable, just throwing in my experience (I'm using all solid state drives now - learned my lesson). 

Best of luck,

Andy


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## kwikfishron (Mar 11, 2010)

Good news, Bad news... The good news is I didn't loose much of anything being it was only a couple of months old. The bad news is that it was only a couple of months old.


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## funfool (Oct 5, 2012)

do you see any writing at all ? 
Seems if it was a hard drive, you would still see bios screen first few seconds while booting, before hard drive comes into play.

If it is instantly scrambled, is a screen issue ... this kinda makes sense, if external is not recognized .... kinda!

If the screen is busted, I would hope that external would work.
There is a chance that the cabling from motherboard to screen got knocked loose.
Loose cabling may interfere with external? plausible at least.

I would try a couple things, unplug the hard drive, pull and reseat the ram, make sure you feel it click into place.
Then with hard drive removed, power it up and see if get to the bios screen at least.

If nothing still, then need to check the instructions for your model to remove the bezel and plastics to check the cables from motherboard to screen.
Possibly disconnect from screen, and then try external again.

I have a friend who was given a broken laptop, fell off the roof of a car and started to back up over it.

He pulled it apart, hung the motherboard on the wall in his workshop, plugs in a new hard drive, monitor, keyboard and mouse and woks great in the shop.
You just need to troubleshoot the issue by removing as much from it as possible, until you find the broken part and figure out if is worth replacing.
The basic motherboard and ram, with no moving parts and surrounded by the case, I would think still works.


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## kwikfishron (Mar 11, 2010)

Thanks, I'll try some of that this weekend. The new one I bought to replace it is the same make and model so I suppose I could try swapping some parts but since it isn't made of wood I'd probably end up with two busted laptops.


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## user1007 (Sep 23, 2009)

Sometimes, just fitting chips that popped from the motherboard or a display card that popped from sockets back in place can solve a lot of problems. 

Harddrives do spin at warp speed and if you dropped one and the heads rattled around and scratched, you could have done some damage. I too learned years ago backing up is critical and encrypted cloud storage and mirror imaging just helped me a few weeks ago when I did something stupid.


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## kwikfishron (Mar 11, 2010)

I haven't tried anything yet, just to nice outside for these types of projects now. I posted the same question on the "Dell Community Forum" and this was the response.



> If there is no display on the external monitor, it indicates an issue with the integrated video card on the mother board. It will be difficult to asses the internal damage hence it would be advisable to send in the laptop to depot for repair. Depot technicians will give a quote based on the damage. In case the system has Complete warranty that covers Accidental damage, depot techs will replace all required parts. Try to contact Out of Warranty repair and check if it worth getting repaired


.


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## MT Stringer (Oct 19, 2008)

If you can figure out how to get into setup, the computer should go to the BIOS during start up. I am not sure if Dell displays any info during the initial boot up.

Seems like most of the time, you have to press a key like F3 (or maybe the DEL key) as soon as you see the first screen display. That should interrupt the Power On Self Test and put you into the BIOS setup. That info is stored on a chip on your motherboard. That would be great if that worked. Even if the screen display is scrambled (by damaged video card) you should see a basic text screen like the old DOS days. It would tell you that the hard drive has been damaged. At that point just turn it off. There is no need to try making any setup changes.

Good luck. That's about all I can suggest.
Mike


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## TheBobmanNH (Oct 23, 2012)

Uhh, stupid question - with my laptop, to get it to show up on an external monitor, I have to press some combo of keys - like "function-3" or something - to get it to display on an external monitor. Just plugging in the monitor does nothing unless I tell the laptop to TALK to that monitor. So... did you check if that's the case? There shoudl be some way of "switching" your display (typically it will cycle between "on-board -> external -> both" or something).


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## user1007 (Sep 23, 2009)

TheBobmanNH said:


> Uhh, stupid question - with my laptop, to get it to show up on an external monitor, I have to press some combo of keys - like "function-3" or something - to get it to display on an external monitor. Just plugging in the monitor does nothing unless I tell the laptop to TALK to that monitor. So... did you check if that's the case? There shoudl be some way of "switching" your display (typically it will cycle between "on-board -> external -> both" or something).


There is a setting in for choosing one or both displays under the CONTROL PANEL and settings menus. Good point.


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## TheBobmanNH (Oct 23, 2012)

sdsester said:


> There is a setting in for choosing one or both displays under the CONTROL PANEL and settings menus. Good point.


Control panel or settings menus aren't going to do much good if he can't see them....


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## kwikfishron (Mar 11, 2010)

Yes, it's set for two monitors. I always run two screens at home.


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## TheBobmanNH (Oct 23, 2012)

kwikfishron said:


> Yes, it's set for two monitors. I always run two screens at home.


Still might be worth attempting to cycle though all the monitor settings if they're available to you in some way (via key combination). I could imagine your laptop screen being the "primary" screen and if some sort of handshake doesn't happen it doesn't bother with the "secondary" (external) screen.

Not trying to harp on this point but I've dropped a laptop and run into this EXACT issue before.


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## user1007 (Sep 23, 2009)

TheBobmanNH said:


> Control panel or settings menus aren't going to do much good if he can't see them....


You have a point.:thumbup:I have seldom had problems with my CLEAR internet connection but once when I did, the HELP screen suggested I contact them via the internet. :laughing::laughing:There is no other option for contacting them that is obvious.


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