Hey everyone,
I'm having a really frustrating issue with my work-issued Dell Latitude 3420. Today, it powered on fine, I logged into Windows, and then out of nowhere, the screen went black, and the laptop became totally unresponsive. Here are the symptoms I'm facing:
- The power LED is stuck on.
- The power button doesn't respond at all, even when I hold it down for over 60 seconds.
- My external devices like a monitor (via HDMI), mouse, and keyboard aren't receiving any signal or power.
- The charging indicator LED doesn't light up when the charger is connected.
- There's a faint hum from inside the laptop, which suggests some power is reaching the motherboard, but...
- There's no display output, no fan noise, and I'm not seeing any signs of BIOS or POST activity.
- I've tried all the Dell reset key combinations (`Power`, `Fn+Power`, `Ctrl+Esc+Power`, etc.), but nothing works.
Right now, I'm just waiting for the battery to die or for HR to get back to me about disconnecting the battery in hopes of rebooting it. Any thoughts on what might've gone wrong or how I can fix this? I'm a bit stressed because I have a week's worth of code saved on there!
2 Answers
If there’s no official IT support, have you thought about reaching out to the software engineer who sets up the laptops? Maybe they can lend you a hand or have some insights.
You should definitely reach out to your company's IT department first. It’s surprising you didn’t mention them before. Going to HR won’t help here. They might be able to provide support or at least guide you to the right person for fixing this.
You'd think they would have one, but they don’t. I’d prefer to tackle this myself to avoid sending it off for repairs.
I wish! The guy doesn't really know how to fix these problems though.