adaliabooks: You've clearly never seen me make pizza ;)

Yes it does... I'm hoping so too, I haven't noticed any difference, it's always been reasonably quick.
But I have a feeling the motherboard may be the more likely culprit. It's not too old, and it's a Dell so hopefully a replacement shouldn't be that big a problem. Might still be quite expensive though, last time I needed a motherboard replaced it was about £100 - £150...

Yeah, I could probably check it in my girlfriend's laptop just to see (but to be honest I'm more of a software than hardware kind of guy and I worry about taking apart anything that still works just in case I break it XD)

HypersomniacLive: I've not, and after your comment, I think I don't want to either. ;-P

Sorry, by slower to boot I meant if you had noticed it sitting on the post screen long-ish, or longer than usual; that's a common sign that the CMOS battery is dying and needs to be replaced.

As for checking the HDD - be bold! Swapping HDDs is one of the simplest things. Just remember to be gentle when pushing it in... hmm... that sounds awkward, should probably stop following the current mafia game.

mike_cesara: I wish it was as easy as bclak and smoking : D Usually it's not that obvious, even with service guide..
And that is a very good answer, you should know best how far you can go. As HypersomniacLive said, it might be CMOS battery. Don't forget to let us know how it goes, we're keeping our fingers crossed for you : )

adaliabooks: I think I found the ram, but it wouldn't come out and I didn't want to force it incase it was something else that wasn't meant to come out.

jpilot: To remove RAM modules, there is never any force required. Quite the opposite, once you gently push the metal latches on both sides of one module a little to the side, the module should pop up and you should be able to simply pull it out without any force. Before doing something like that (actually anything involving handling electronic parts) you should touch some grounded metal object like a radiator to remove any static charge from your body that could otherwise easily damage components.

jpilot: To remove RAM modules, there is never any force required. Quite the opposite, once you gently push the metal latches on both sides of one module a little to the side, the module should pop up and you should be able to simply pull it out without any force. Before doing something like that (actually anything involving handling electronic parts) you should touch some grounded metal object like a radiator to remove any static charge from your body that could otherwise easily damage components.

adaliabooks: Ah, I wasn't really sure if they were latches or not so didn't want to force them. I'll know for next time.
I'm always extra careful if I do anything to ground myself as I do tend to wear synthetic fibre clothes which generate a lot of static sometimes.

adaliabooks: Yeah, I could probably check it in my girlfriend's laptop just to see (but to be honest I'm more of a software than hardware kind of guy and I worry about taking apart anything that still works just in case I break it XD)

adaliabooks: Thank you for the detailed post. I don't think it's (just) the screen as plugging a monitor in did nothing, and it's not making the right noises to suggest a normal start up. If the screen is at fault as well I'll let a professional sort it as I don't have the right tools...

adaliabooks: [...]

I'll keeo you informed :)

HypersomniacLive: *checks definition of "keeo", comes up empty handed*

Any news?

adaliabooks: Not yet :/
Just going to ring the place now and see what's going on as I'd expected to hear something by now (they need to call me and tell me what the problem is and how much it will cost to fix still...)

Also keeo is like keep but typed on a phone keyboard :P

Ganni1987: Does the white screen come up often? And if you plug it to an external monitor do you get a white screen there too? If the ram is good, then this could very well be a dying GPU issue, which in such a case it may be solved by reflowing the chip on the mainboard.

In the PC repair shop where I work we get a lot of laptops with very similar issues and most of the time a reflow fixes it, although the chances of success aren't always guaranteed, in some cases we had to do it twice and in others it's a total loss.

First thing I'd try is to see if the external monitor outputs anything and I'd proceed from there.