[jch461]

I have a major problem with my dell XPS M140 laptop. It has been acting up for the past few weeks where the mouse pointer would start going crazy own it's own and opening programs by itself. It was like I would erratically move my finger on the touchpad while constantly hitting the left mouse button. It would do this for about 20 seconds or so before it would quit and I could regain control of the computer.

Now just a couple days ago the computer would just completely freeze. It would be totally unresponsive and I would have to hold the power button to restart it. It varied where it would freeze and seemed totally randon and not tied to a program or browser (I have both Chrome and IE8 on it). It froze while on the net in both Chrome and IE8.

Later before the latest problem it would even totally freeze while the computer was booting up. I would have to restart it a couple times while it was booting up on the Dell Screen. It would freeze while the little status bar was going across. When it started up I went to the dell site and reflashed the BIOS as well as made sure I had all the latest drivers but it had no effect. One note though... it did flash an error on one shutdown that I had to make to update hardware that gave out a memory related error. Like position 0x******* could not be read or something like that. I did see that error before but didn't think much about it.

Now it has progressed to the point where when you try to start it up the LEDs come on for a second.. hard drive kicks in.. and then it shuts down. It shows nothing on screen and it shuts down within a couple seconds every time.

I tried to swap out memory sticks with another machine but it had no effect. I also set aside an hour last night and tore it apart and replaced the mother board with another I had laying around that I knew was good from a hardware problem that i didn't troubleshoot right last time (was a faulty memory stick under the keyboard that time). that didn't change anything. Then I even swapped out the hard drive with another new one that is formatted but does not have an operating system on it... that didn't change anything. It will still just come on a couple seconds and shut right off. You can do this a hundred times and it will yield the same results each time.

Now I'm stumped. What else could it be? It seems to be a hardware. Right? Can I go back in and disconnect items like the touchpad to see if it will at least boot up? Would there be anything else?