Correct diagnoses on Dell Studio?

[DanF]

I have a Dell Studio PP33L on the bench. The reported problem is: No Display on Screen.

What happens:

1. Notebook Turns on.
2. No POST.
3. You can see the LED lights on the multimedia bar turning on and off (part of a fancy system power up)
4. Nothing else happens. Bluetooth light turns on and can't be turned off. You can press on the Play, forward (etc...) touch buttons and they turn on and off just fine.

According to the below, it's a system board fault (sorry for the large image):

5. Cooling fan turns on after a while. Left the chassis open and the temperature wasn't high enough for the cooling fan to start up. So it started normally.
6. Removed each DIMM and tried in different slots (no strange beeps, nothing unusual).
7. Check all connections (even disassembled the screen panel).
8. Connected to an external display (got nothing). Restarted just to make sure. Don't have another matching screen to try with (although I don't think it's a screen issue).

Do you guys also think it's the mobo? Maybe I'm missing some other diagnoses procedures I could try?

 

[nlinecomputers]

Which POST flash code is it displaying?

 

[DanF]

Third one. (if you can call that a code). Would have been more convinced if it was some other code though

 

[Larry Sabo]

I would re-flash the BIOS with the latest version using an EEPROM programmer.

 

[DanF]

Never used one before. Will find out more about this method. I wonder when it's really worth doing this though.