I might be able to fix this, too.

Working on my 2nd laptop so far. It's a Dell Inspiron 2200 found in the trash. With a replacement power supply and a DVD ROM drive put in that was found with it, it powers on and the screen is good.

Today the replacement hard drive arrived, and so I plunked it in and let Windows XP Home Edition do something with it. The BIOS saw it and knew the capacity (40GB). So I let the installer format the drive. It gets to 86% and then the power drops dead.

Problem: I knew the DC power jack was loose, so this was no surprise as it finally got warm enough with a hard drive in to affect the thermal expansion properties of loose power jacks. So I decided that I'll get the thermal grease later - I want at that damn power jack! So I get it apart and the last step - getting the motherboard out - was stumping me. The Internet Archive kept a copy of the Dell service manual for the 2200, and wouldn't you know it - one glance at it, then back to the motherboard and it lifted right out!

And the culprit - nearly no solder on any of the power jack bits on the circuit board! I also saw one other bit that broke off and will fix that, too. Now to remedy this and get it back together to the point just before putting all the heat sinks on it so I can get Arctic Silver on it.

I want to see this machine work.