Laptop burnt out? Need some help

[ryanjh]

Thanks in advance for any answers.

I'm playing in Spain on a US laptop. It is about 4 years old, and I'm plugged into the EU power grid here by means of a plug converter. Yesterday night, I went to turn on my computer and I couldn't get any more reaction than a black screen with a blinking dash in the top-left corner. When I hit the power button it turned off instantly as it does in the preliminary stages of booting. I can't get to diagnostics or any of that stuff, just the black screen with the cursor.

When I turn on the system on battery power, the orange, low-battery light goes on. On AC power, it seems to pulse charge because the indicator light flashes on and off, but not like it flashes when you're on extremely low battery.

So the real question? Am I out of luck? Is there anything I can do to fix it?

I appreciate anyone's help and apologize for the long post; I figured that more detail might help someone reach a conclusion.

[Sigi]

What model system? Sounds honestly like the videocard has fried. One thing you can do is see (if it's a Dell!) if the capslock, numlock, and scroll-lock leds come on in a specific pattern. This is one way you can diagnose the symptoms a little bit further

[ryanjh]

It is an old Inspiron 5150. It could very well be the video card. I had a handful of problems with it about 6 months ago and FFXI hasn't been running at nearly the same speed it used to. At first I thought it might've been virus issues, but video in general seems to be really hindered and slow.

If it is a video card, odds are I'd probably just replace the laptop itself. At four years old, it would be roughly equivalent to putting like 5,000 dollars of work into a used car from the early 90s. I was just hoping that there might be an easy solution to hold me over until I can get a laptop sent across the ocean.