im looking for some help on finding what has knackered my laptop, ive got a dell d420, i just started it up and joined my girlfreinds newly installed bt wireless network a while after i did (not sure how long as i wasnt looking at the time) it blue screens, i think nothing more of it as my lappie sometimes does it then works fine so i turn it off and start it back up when i do as it tries to start up the black screen with the cursor in the top left comes up but has 3 colored squares on it and in one of them is 2 smiley faces that flash, so i restart the computer again only to find it wont turn on, the power and scroll lock, caps lock and num lock lights turn on, stay on for a few seconds then go out there is no hdd activity or and bios screen etc. my virus software etc is all up to date. all i can think of is that the virus has wiped my cmos chip hence it not turning on.

viruses that damage CMOSes haven't really existed since the CIH virus...

first things first, pull the hard drive, and run a memory test program like memtest86... it might report errors, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's the memory... i'd be more inclined to say it's a cooling failure that causes the machine to hard crash.

let us know how things turn out.

yeah, i don't think this is a virus. sounds more like hardware failure. this is common with laptops as people tend to sit them on pillows and what not. this covers up the ventilation ports on the base causing the machine to overheat.

This definitely sounds like a HW failure. My guess is that either MB or a video card gave in. You can try disconnecting your lappy from the AC and removing the battery for a while, but I doubt you'll get it working again... sorry.

As others have said, it's not a virus. I very much doubt any HW damage can be caused by viruses in the modern world...

Try to boot up in safemode, if it even comes up...not so hot when it comes to laptops but if this was a desktop I'd suggest a cmos flash but that's likely not practical on a laptop..

Otherwise it'll be hardware FAILURE and will need to go back to Dell.