Dell Laptop won't turn on

Hello,

First question we need to ask is what model of laptop do you have?   That will go a long way in determining what the various status lights mean and how to go about troubleshooting the system.

I would also recommend you check out this link on resolving no power / no POST issues with systems.  After that, you may want to go to http://www.dell.com/Support and look up the product support pages for your particular system.  Those pages will explain how to run the various diagnostics on that system, what the LED light sequences indicate, as well as other troubleshooting steps you can try specific to your model.

Next, disconnect your system from the external monitor and see if it will power up.   You can also try removing the battery and seeing if the system will start just with the adapter attached.  I'd also suggest trying to start the system without the AC adapter inserted and see if it will power up just off the battery alone.

Last, and this depends on the model of laptop you are running, you may want to try removing some of the components such as any optical drive, memory, wireless cards, etc. (and the list really is dependent on the model type).  See if the system will power up without one or more of those components installed.

As for the data, unless there was a catastrophic event that sent a surge through your system it doesn't sound like the harddrive is the issue with the system not powering up.  You can pull the hard drive out of most systems (again, model specific), then attach that hard drive to another system to pull data off it.  That isn't something that Dell helps with here on the forums, although others may be able to provide you with more information on data retrieval.  

Let us know which model you have, and whether you've been able to resolve the problem.  We'll see what else we can recommend.

Todd