New Laptop

debitcardmayhem

All the above is moot , OP has not stated what constitutes "died", nor does he/she quote the Service Tag, I guess laptop from thread title , but OP is vague as to what they already have. They may just want to replace the PC with a laptop, but if it's 8 years old it's not likely to be a 7th gen i5

newatc

I'm sorry not replying quicker but have been out. Yes I must have got the generation totally wrong, The computer(yes laptop) was definitely 8 years ago so 2nd gen as written by Everywhere is probably correct .
As to my simple adjective of "died", it has for sometime had problems starting up (going into diagnostics) and USB port has stopped working. Last week it beeped when turning on and the display was completely blank. So I came to the conclusion, maybe wrongly, that it was time to change.

As I think I have clearly demonstrated on this thread I'm rightly not confident of doing many of the suggestions such as fitting disk or new display myself (compared to me Frank Spencer would be regarded as a DIY expert) so my instinct is getting this all fixed by computer shop wouldn't be a lot cheaper than starting again with new box and hopefully the new one will have a longer life than the old upgraded Dell.

Listening to some replies, it does seem the 8gb will suffice.

Thanks for all the replies.

grumpycrab

newatc wrote: »

Last week it beeped when turning on and the display was completely blank.

I'm sure a computer friend would have a look at this - may be fixable. The 1 beep may be a system board failure / possible BIOS corruption.

Disconnect the power adapter and battery and press and hold the power button for 30 seconds to release any static power. Then test the system with the adapter only / battery only.

If that doesn't work BIOS recovery may be the next step...

newatc

grumpycrab wrote: »

Disconnect the power adapter and battery and press and hold the power button for 30 seconds to release any static power. Then test the system with the adapter only / battery only.

I had read that advice elsewhere and tried it without success. I'm pretty sure I'm going to buy new laptop for reasons stated but also keeping the current laptop to experiment with.