I have a dell 5150 notebook that i'd had for about 2 years now. everything was working fine when suddenly yesterday i got on the computer and it wouldn't open windows. it just showed me the Dell screen as if it was loading. I turned it off and let it sit for awhile and tried again. still the same. It will power up... and when windows starts to load I hear a click and notice that the power light goes off new the screen but the light near the front speakers stays on. its like the screen goes off and i have no option but to hold in the power button to turn it off. Well i tried and tried and eventually i got something that came up and said windows wasn't opening due to an error. i had the option to open in safe mode or other options so i went with safe mode, and the same thing happened. it started to work and when i logged in it went off. I soon was able to get to a systems test um... something tree symptomtree or something and tested all the systems and tey said they are fine. do i have a virus or an internal problem. I had batter at full and i was plugged in to the wall when trying all of this. please help... my email is josh_uk_hughes@yahoo.com if you really know my problem.

some sites sayed that other people experienced the same problem with the dell 5150 because the outside case was weak and pressure points caused it to shut off, but i don't think thats it.

The click sounds would indicate a hardware issue. Can you determine what clicks?

To repair or reinstall XP Dell has this page:

http://support.dell.com/support/topi...30030ABD62041A