Question : Problem: Dell Inspiron 9300 Memory Issue

I am diagnosing a Dell 9300 that wont start up (doesn't post). As far as I know it hasn't been dropped or had anything spilled on it; it just woke up one day and wouldn't turn on. The problem may not be the memory (or it may be more than the memory), but when I was diagnosing the laptop by removing the memory I got unexpected results.

Right after the laptop stopped working, this is how it would behave upon hitting the power button:

- Power light and HDD light come on
- HDD light immediately goes off and remains that way
- Hard Drive fan remains running but no other fan is running and no read/write sound
- There is never a beep or any sounds indicating the computer is booting. The monitor remains completely blank.

The laptop has two 1GB memory chips, I found that removing the one in DIMM 2 resulted in very small "improvement" (?) to the boot sequence: the numlock light comes on for a few seconds and the main fan turns on, neither of which had occurred prior.

Now, this may mean there is something wrong with the memory chip in DIMM 2, because when I then take the removed chip (that had been in DIMM 2) and put it in DIMM 1, the laptop behaves the same way it did before.

**If that is unclear, I will elaborate: Even though both memory chips are identical in terms of specs, I will call one chip A and the other chip B.
- When Chip A is in DIMM 1 and Chip B is in DIMM 2: No fan or numlock light
- When Chip A is in DIMM 1 and Chip B is out: Fan works and numlock light comes one briefly (although computer still fails to boot)
- When Chip A is out and Chip B is in DIMM 1: No fan or numlock light

Is there a way to explain this behavior? How could it help me diagnose the larger problem?

If anyone wants to see what the laptop looks like, here is the manual:
http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/ins9300/en/om/om_en.pdf

Thanks in advance for any help!

Answer : Problem: Dell Inspiron 9300 Memory Issue

does it beep without ram installed?
the different behaviour can be caused by bad ram, or a bad slot; did you inspect / clean it out?
Try also this : remove AC and battery,
hold power button for 30 sec,
now install power and try to boot.

you can also remove the disk and cd drive, to see if it boots to a screen, otherwise, a bad mobo /cpu