Dell refuses to comment on investigation into the battery in the computer.

VENICE -- When state fire investigators couldn't determine the cause of a South Venice house fire, they called on the world's largest PC maker to figure out if one of its computers was to blame.

Nearly three months later, investigators are still waiting for an answer from Dell -- which earlier had recalled millions of laptops after learning of a faulty battery -- on what sparked the Aug. 17 blaze that left a family of five homeless.

"It's out of our hands," said Sam Venzeio, a spokesman for the State Fire Marshal's Office, which turned to Dell's engineers to analyze the laptop after being unable to find any other cause for the blaze.

As a rule, Dell tries to obtain the laptops and run its own analysis when an incident like this is reported, a company spokeswoman said.

But Dell will not talk about those investigations, and a federal agency that oversees product recalls only has limited oversight.

Since the Sony lithium-ion batteries used in millions of laptops have already been recalled due to their tendency to overheat and burst into flames, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission can only inspect Dell's completed report on the laptop in question.

The South Venice blaze occurred just three days after Dell recalled 4.1 million faulty batteries used in various notebook models. Since then, Apple, Toshiba, Hewlett-Packard and other computer makers that used the Sony battery in question have also instituted recalls.

Those batteries are blamed for 16 incidents worldwide in which they either overheated or caught fire, according to a spokesman for the CPSC. None of the incidents resulted in injury or death.

The laptop recovered from Louis and Jeanne Minnear's Falkland Road home after the fire was a Latitude D500, one of the models with the faulty Sony batteries.

If Dell engineers find there is no evidence that the computer sparked the blaze at the Minnears' home, the cause could remain undetermined, fire investigators said.

When reached on his cell phone this week, Louis Minnear said he and his family have not been able to return to their home, which sustained an estimated $198,000 in damage. He declined further comment.

In August, Minnear told the Herald-Tribune that he awoke to a smell of what he thought was an electrical fire. But after a quick sweep through the house, he went back to bed.

About 45 minutes later, Minnear woke up again and saw that his couch was engulfed in flames.

He said his wife, who used the computer for work, had left the computer on a stack of papers on the couch.

Jeanne Minnear told investigators she saw blue sparks coming from her laptop before she fled her burning home, according to the Sarasota County Fire Marshal's initial report.

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