Ronjan1250

I also have a Dell Inspiron 5100 that will not always bootup. When it doesn't come up I get one beep and one light at the far right just under the LCD monitorand one at the power light. Both are green. I can get it up sometimes by pushing on a spot between the power and reset buttons. I'v removed the switch plate and inspected the connections and looked for cracks on both mother board and switch board. All looks good. I have also replaced the video card and it does the samething. Are there any known issues? The laptop came with a 5160 mother board but it burnt up (the good old dell power jack connector). I replaced it with a new 5100 board, and new heat sink w/fan, and video card. The card turned out to be good, just this frick bootup problem. Thanks for any help on this.

Chris516

Have you swapped the power supply, to see if the power supply is the culprit?

Ronjan1250

Yes, I did try a different power pack and battery. As it would do this using a/c or battery. I again tore the unit completely down and inspected each piece again. This time using a 10x magnifier and a 150 watt light (I think I know what snow blind feels like now.lol). I found an area that showed ware on the cooper portion of the mother board, right near the area that is in between the two switches. It was due to the upper plastic shell having a support leg that ran down to the mother board to give support for the switch plate for when you apply pressure to operate the switch's. On one side of this support area, I was able to locate a solder joint that had a very fine crack in it, allowing the pin to move within the joint of the motherboard. I re-soldered the joint, and shaved off one-sixteenth of the support leg, as I feel it was applying too much pressure to the mother board when operating the switches. The unit has been working flawlessly every sense. Hopefully this was the problem. Thanks for looking at my post.

Terrister

Good work on finding the problem and fixing it.
Thanks for posting back.