Just now.. someone gave me a dell Latitude CPX, Pentium 3 laptop. All fine and dandy but it wont turn on it, no lights or anything. Unplugged extra memory and all the drives and such, still nothing.

I am wondering though, could it be because they took the hard drive out with teh bay? Would that cause a dell laptop to not turn on?

Interesting....

So it is a notebook without a hd?

If it won't boot up and there is no slightest indication that there is any activity (e.g. screen lit up a bit), it is, I guess, most likely the motherboard problem.

I'd guess no one can you give you a definite answer without actually seeing how 'broken' it is.

that this problem may very well be a hardware-thing.

I read somewhere on the Dell userforum (Yes, Dell has one on their website somewhere; look for 'community' or that sort of thing) that the C-line of machines are designed wrong somewhere around the CPU socket. This CPU module form factor thing is called MMC1 or similar. I recall something about a clip, intended to hold the CPU in place but unabnle to do this properly by design. Dell seemed to be aware of the problem as customers were able to request new clips at no charge.

Have a couple of these C-series wrecks lying around, both completely dead like yours. Haven't had time to tinker with them yet, but this is where i'd start; poking at the cpu-socket-thingy.

BTW: C's with no memory installed respond to powerbutton by blinking their led's a few times, then completely shutting off again - no screen activity at all.

HD absent is not a problem. A working C-model will boot fine without it - and ask for boot media

Good luck!