A friend asked me to look at his sister's Studio One 1909 that would not power on. She brought it to Best Buy, for repair, and was told it was the motherboard and not worth fixing. When the computer is first plugged in the DVD/CD eject light will illuminate for a short period and then goes out, no fans no beeps ...nothing.
I tried a few things to get it started, unplugged hold power button, remove CMOS battery check all connections etc.. but it seemed dead and I was arriving at the same conclusion as the technician at Best Buy, dead motherboard or maybe bad power supply.
I called my friend and gave him the bad news and then he told me that he had the computer running after he brought it home from his sister's house. He said it started and ran fine and he left it on when he went to sleep and when he woke up the next day it wouldn't start no matter what he tried. He asked how the motherboard could be dead if it was running so well for 1 day. I decided to give the computer another look. I removed the power button checked that, checked all the power connections once again and could not find any obvious problems. I plugged the computer in while I had it laying on the table, face down, and left it for a time period before I went back to it. I stood the computer upright and to my amazement the computer started up and everything ran flawlessly. I was curious as to what I may have touched to cause it to boot up. My excitement lasted only until the next morning when the computer would not power on. I came to the conclusion that laying the computer face down was the trick that enabled me to start the computer.
I worked with the computer for a few days and figured out that it was going into some sort of sleep mode between 1 and 2 AM and in order to restart I would have to leave it face down for about 1/2 hour before booting up. I have tried different things every night, unplugging at night, leaving it running, shutting down and leaving it plugged in, and the results were the same each morning, no matter how I left the computer the night before it wouldn't power on. Last evening after shutdown I left the computer face down and this morning I put it upright, and it booted right away.
My theory is that some sort of pressure is being put on the touch screen sensors by laying it face down and it wakes the computer up. I tried many things prior to discovering this trick. I went in to CMOS settings, the first day that I was able to boot the computer, and the only problem I noted was the date was incorrect so I corrected that and reset everything to default settings. I set the power options in windows to never go into sleep mode but I don't think the operating system is in any way related to this problem since it would go into this hibernation even when unplugged. I still think it is a motherboard issue but not sure what could be causing this.
I wanted to update the BIOS from Version A04 but I read in the forums about systems being bricked after the BIOS flash and I don't want to take that risk with someone elses computer.
Anyone have any thoughts about what the problem might be?
Dell Studio One 1909
BIOS Version A04
Pentium (R) Dual-Core ES200@2.5GHz
Memory 4GB 800MHz
Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit