It was a non working hand me down from my son.
After a lots of fiddling I am getting it to boot and work but not consistently.
Sometimes it freezes on boot, sometimes comes up with a blue screen, sometimes while I turn it on the A (caps on) STATUS light keeps blinking for a second and it turn itself off.
Often I can bring it to LIFE by disconnecting all power, removing the battery and removing and reinstalling the memory chips.
It runs WinXP Pro SP3, bios updated from Dell, Dell reset all drivers and reported no driver problem, all service packs installed.
How can diagnose what is wrong?
Thanks for any HELP?
NathanDo you have any information from the Blue screen?
It should have a Stop code, SOMETHING similar to 0x0000000C2, that would be a start.

Can dell tell you what the status light blinking could indicated some sort of HARDWARE issue, I would look it up on google.com but I am currently at work.Download BlueScreenView
No installation required.
Double click on BlueScreenView.exe file to run the program.
When scanning is done, go Edit>Select All.
Go File>Save Selected Items, and save the report as BSOD.txt.
Open BSOD.txt in Notepad, copy all content, and paste it into your next reply.