Working on a Dell Inspiron 1521 that goes to black shortly after the Vista progress bar comes on (happens in safe mode too). The owner had Staples check it and they said it needed a new drive. She was a bit hesitant so I told her I would look at it. I ran the full suite of Dell HDD diagnostics along with WD drive software I had on hand at the time. Neither of which showed any errors. I can get to the recovery console but it's asking for a admin password and the owner doesn't recall ever having set one. I was also able to get error checking to run. But after a couple of hours but I stopped it after noticing the drive light wasn't active. Upon getting home I have now tried to utilize Dell recovery partition but it's not coming up as an option. Resorted to run the Dell OS disk but it too stalls out shortly after launch- no active drive light. The drive is a Seagate and I just tried to run their software but the keybrd and mouse become inoperative at the EULA. I'm starting to believe it is the drive but with the several I've replaced over the years I don't think I've seen one act this perculiar. Thought I'd throw this out to everyone just to make sure I haven't missed something. Thanks, Russ

Sounds like it works ok sometimes, and fails other times. Try a different power cable/connector. The female pins in those connectors sometimes get spread and cause intermittent problems.