Hi, I have a Dell Inspiron 2500 laptop, and have started to have some trouble with it. When i boot into windows, it will boot up fine. But when using it for around 10 mins, it will either freeze, LCD turns off or lines go accross the screen. I thought it was an overheating problem becuase the northbridge chip was getting really hot. It didnt even have a heatsink on it. So i put a northbridge heatsink on it (still gets red hot). i have tried reseeting the motherboard and checking for shorts and even flashing the bios to the newest one. Also, once it has crashed, when i try to turn it back on again, nothing appears on the LCD. All what happens is that the power LED turns on. Does anyone know what my problem is? I am a student so i dont have hardly no money to spend on it. Thanks for all of your time :D AMD Athlon XP 2800 PC2700 512mb Geforce fx 5200 oc'ed Gigabyte GA-7S748-L Windows XP Professional With service pack 2 400 watt PSU 48x dvdrom 120G 7200rpm hard disk 10MB broa

Sounds like an overheating problem but most likely the CPU. Do the fans come on, both of them. The fans should click in for a few seconds when you first turn the laptop on, then go off. If this doesn't happen then the fan(s) may need replacing. It could also be accumulated dust inside the machine preventing the hot air from being exhausted properly. Mack sure the air outlet and the fans are clean and free of accumulated gunk. To eliminate the LCD as the problem, disable it in the BIOS and plug in a desktop VDU if you have one available. Stuart

Yeah the fans do come on for a second when i press the power button on it. But wile i am actuly in windows, they dont seem to come on at all. I have took the keyboard off and touched the metal on the cpu that attaches the heat-pipe but it is jst warm. The heatpipe is boiling hot and so is the heatsink though. I will do the thing with my pc monitor when i get back home. I will post here straight away. Thanks AMD Athlon XP 2800 PC2700 512mb Geforce fx 5200 oc'ed Gigabyte GA-7S748-L Windows XP Professional With service pack 2 400 watt PSU 48x dvdrom 120G 7200rpm hard disk 10MB broa

Dell machines do have overheating problems it almost seems like my dell fan never comes on it almost sounds like an lcd adapder problem or its cable Have you tried hooking up a regular monitor to the vga port?