There is power to Laptop but has a black screen

itz may b many internal hardware cause, like the battery(main/cmos); ram; sm section of the system board; ccfl; inverter circuit; or even the lcd....
so itz always better to hv supervision..frm ur system admin/vendor/good or authorised service center....

it could be there was a windows update that was unsuccessfully installed when you turned it off. (that leads to corrupted windows). Try accessing windows advance boot options (tap F8 on dell logo screen) .select repair your computer and use system restore (restore it to date where it was still working) hope this helps.

I had the same problem with an Inspiron 1521 that was given to me. Turned out the only problem was that the RAM was installed incorrectly. Somehow I remembered that the memory needs to be installed in the correct slot for it to work. Meaning, if there are 2 slots available on the laptop, then the larger of the RAM would go into Bank-A and the smaller into Bank-B. If not done this way, you'll usually get power (sometimes none) and blank LCD. It's easy to make this mistake with these laptops because one bank is hidden under the keyboard and not as easily accessible as the one on the bottom of laptop. The #1 or "A" slot for my laptop happened to be the one under the keyboard. It had a 512MB chip installed while the outer one (#2 or "B" slot) had 1GB. Switching them did the trick for me. =) Check that out and see if maybe it was something as simple as that. It could save you a lot of grief and money. Hope this helped. =)

Hello and thank you for using Fixya's services.

You can test the laptop by plugging another monitor into it. If the monitor shows, then your screen is out (backlight or invertor). You can order a replacement screen through eBay for a very reasonable price.

If it doesn't appear then your video graphics card may be out. This can also be purchased and replaced.

Please let me know if you have any questions.