Help Dell Inspiron Windows 10 Laptop Dead

Thanks for your help. It seems my Dell Inspiron 7537 has a serious hardware fault and I'll need a new laptop.

I changed the CMOS battery but the old one still showed 3V and was probably OK. I could boot the laptop with the main battery removed having left it overnight and entered the Dell diagnostics (F12). The diagnostics ran part way through then there was various screen flickering then just a black screen. I noticed the CPU heat sink was quite hot and this persisted with the PC in the hung state. The PC can be rebooted into the diagnostics screen (F12) once left a few hours to cool but soon crashes after a minute or so on retrying the diagnostics scan.

I assume I have a serious motherboard problem which isn't worth fixing on a 5 year old PC. Are there any laptop brands significantly more reliable than Dell when shopping for new one?

Steve C said:

I assume I have a serious motherboard problem which isn't worth fixing on a 5 year old PC...

It could just be five years of accumulated fluff and dust in the fans or cooling ducts. That at least would be worth checking. I have an 8 year old laptop that's needed a clean out a couple of times now.

I cleaned out the dust which wasn't too bad when I changed the CMOS battery

I've had several laptop brands over the years, including Lenovo, Toshiba, Acer and Dell. The current Dell Inspiron 15 5577 model has been the best and most reliable.

Five years, depending on how much and how it was used and the environment, can be a make/break for a new one.

If you are up to it, I'd change the CPU cooler thermal paste. Worth a try as it does seem to run, some and apparently overheats.

I've just noticed holding the power key for 10 secs forces a restart and I get 7 beeps which is a CPU cache / processor failure. Sounds terminal!

A replacement motherboard with i7 CPU is more like £150 in the UK. I can't be sure that's the problem plus the laptop has been well used. I'll fiddle with it a bit longer but will probably invest the cash in a
new laptop having similar spec. Any recommendations?

Up to say £750. 15" screen, 8GB RAM, i5 / i7, good screen res, don't need fast GPU for gaming. Not bothered about hard drive since can reuse 500GB SSD in bust laptop.