When I bootup my Inspiron 2650 my screen is Black. This issue started happening when I replaced the Ram under my Keyboard since it the whole machine only detected 256 and wanted to upgrade it to 512.

Hey cheetahman,

Have you tried the obvious so far, putting your 256 back in it's slot? altough normally it will beep at you if it has problems booting with the new stick.

The slots are not normally located near the screen connections, is it possible the laptop could have been banged, or too much pressure put on the back of the screen when the RAM was being installed? The screen itself is extremely delicate, with only a thin layer of plasic covering it. Very easy to damage.

If you wait for the laptop to bootup normally (if it still does), wait for your HDD light to stop flashing. You may have your usual welcome to windows sound theme. If you look closely at the screen in a dark room, can you just about make out part of your desktop or welcome page very faintly?

Replacing Ram doesn't work and I don't have Windows XP on it.

You don't have XP on it, you mean you can't see it, or it's not installed?

Another thing you can check if possible, is to attach a screen to the back of the laptop. Hold down the [FN] key, followed by one of the function keys indicating the external monitor, normally F4, F7 or F8. This will rule out the likely hood of it being an onboard motherboard problem.

Is the Dell still under warranty?

It has Linux on it and is used as my Testing Laptop

I'll Test out the External Monitor it Doesn't work

and the Dell isn't under Warranty it was Bought in Winter 2002

This all happened when the ram was changed

Ok, let us know how the external monitor goes. Does it seem like Linux is loading in the background even though the screen is blank?