So let's get started.I have an 8 yr old dell inspiron, it's fans blow constantly (going to invest in canned air to remedy it if it's not the chip described later), every battery inserted in it shorts out immediately and the laptop doesn't boot up, and finally, on start up I get the bios loading screen, then the screen goes all white for a few minutes(pressing esc and end seems to speed it up).
A dude at my school who works for sony (and is incidentally a developer, the school server mechanic AND a student) told me it might be the graphics chip having a short on the mother board, but he didn't believe me when I showed him it boots up( go figure
), and personally i believe that the whole thing is possessed. It does run firefox 3 tho .i'm just looking to stop the fan and find the short. I'm starting to get seasick from the constant blow from the fans for five seconds off then off for two repeat.