A fix for the "DELL Vostro 1500 not starting up" syndrome

I have been using a Dell Vostro 1500 for the past few years. About 10 days ago my laptop hung in the middle and I manually shut it down and upon pressing the power button it wouldn't start up! The power light would light up for a second or so but thats it nothing more. No display, no sound, nothing. I cleaned and placed the RAM making sure that it goes into the slot well. I verified the Hard Disk to be in the working condition. I used a blower and a vacuum cleaner to clean up the innards but still the same problem persisted. But somehow after persistent cleaning of the inner parts one day it just booted up and then I realized that the CPU FAN wasn't working at all. I opened up the fan and found out a ball of dust probably clogging the fan but I was able to blow the air and move the fan while that dusty ball was still inside. But even when I cleaned up the stuff the fan wasn't working at all. Then I downloaded this wonderful program which allows manual control of the system CPU fan - I8kfanGUI 3.0 – DELL Notebook Fan Control Utility [Alternative link]. Then upon setting the fan to the highest speed it just simply worked wonders!!!

"This is an extremely cool utility – a must have for all DELL notebook owners. When I say “cool” here, it means really good."

I have quoted this from the link above.

Meanwhile, when my laptop was as good as dead I had gone to various forums and traversed the nooks and niches of the web trying to find a solution - anything that could help me to fix my peril. I had reached Dell's forum and to my ghastly surprise I saw a thread with many comments which suggested that Vostro 1500 had a liking to just die after 1.5 years or so. I'm glad I was able to revive my Vostro 1500 - its a beast for a laptop but I love it!