I was recently asked to look a a Dell Inspiron 6000 which refused to power up. If the battery was charged in another system it ran fine from the battery. After a quick check on the internet it appears that the DC power jack is a common fault with these laptops. I purchased a replacement jack and set about replacing it. Dell provide a service manual for all their systems including the 6000 and it has details on how to strip down the laptop and rebuild it.
You will need to clear some space on your workbench to perform this task as there are a lot of parts to be removed from the laptop. There are also a lot of screws so have somewhere to put them as well. Ideally you want small bags that you can place with the component that was removed e.g. the hard drive or display.
Once you have the system board out it is not difficult to find the DC jack. It can be however a pain to remove it without damaging the circuit board so be patient. I found that it was difficult to get the solder to melt because there was so little, so I added more solder to the joint which flowed in to the joint and was much easier to remove.
This is not a difficult fix if you have soldered before but it takes a bit of time to strip down the laptop. Unfortunately the laptop I was working on has a further fault which I haven’t found yet. I touched up the solder joints for some of the components on the power circuit just in case there was a bad connection. If anybody has any other ideas on what would cause an Inspiron 6000 to run fine from a charged battery but not the power supply please let me know.
Paul Hartigan's Blog 