likely because it's a Dell, but I thought I would ask for help anyway.

So, here's the deal. Things been a POS from the get go, and spent the
last year sitting on a desk bearly used (maybe once a month). A couple
of months ago my system went down and the Dell became the new home office
computer. Since, it's been running 24hrs a day, as I never turn my
desktop off (for a number of reasons).

Last night I moved it from one room to another and set it back up and
when I pressed the power button, nothing happened. I held it down fir a
minute to try and reset it and turned the power bar off (which caused the
lights on the front of the case to light up breifly maybe as a means of
flushing any risidual power out?) and then turned the power back on
again. After pressing the power button a couple of more times in
frustration, IT STARTS!

Since its now in my bedroom, I turned it off when I was done and it
hasn't been willing to turn on again since. I spent some time screwing
with the button, but no go.

So, I figure its the power supply. Swapped it out for the one from the
broken system (since it was the mobo that went on that one) and I ended
up with a very strange result. The new PS is a Super Flower 350W/370W (?
if that makes sense) and has three fan settings. Each of these settings
has its own colour light (blue, green and red) to make it easy to see
what speed you have it on. Now, with this new PS in, when turn the PS
on, I get a flash of lights on the front of the case, the fan spins for a
second and then the fan light goes very dim. Its still on, but very
faint. When I press the power button on the front of the case, still
nothing happens. When I turn the PS off, I get the same thing; fan light
gets bright, fan spins for a sec, lights on front of case, then the power
goes off.

unplugged everything, but 1 stick of RAM, 1 HD, and that's about it.

Thoughts, ideas, suggestions? Any help would be much appreciated.

A

At work they bought Dells thin line I think, anyway almost every one
has failed.. Dell has extended the warranty . If yours is less tan 2
years old I would check.. If I remember correctly the problem is caps
on the main board were bad.. Look at the the capacitors for bulging or
leakage on the board.

"Jill" wrote in message
...
likely because it's a Dell, but I thought I would ask for help anyway.

So, here's the deal. Things been a POS from the get go, and spent the
last year sitting on a desk bearly used (maybe once a month). A couple
of months ago my system went down and the Dell became the new home office
computer. Since, it's been running 24hrs a day, as I never turn my
desktop off (for a number of reasons).

Last night I moved it from one room to another and set it back up and
when I pressed the power button, nothing happened. I held it down fir a
minute to try and reset it and turned the power bar off (which caused the
lights on the front of the case to light up breifly maybe as a means of
flushing any risidual power out?) and then turned the power back on
again. After pressing the power button a couple of more times in
frustration, IT STARTS!

Since its now in my bedroom, I turned it off when I was done and it
hasn't been willing to turn on again since. I spent some time screwing
with the button, but no go.

So, I figure its the power supply. Swapped it out for the one from the
broken system (since it was the mobo that went on that one) and I ended
up with a very strange result. The new PS is a Super Flower 350W/370W (?
if that makes sense) and has three fan settings. Each of these settings
has its own colour light (blue, green and red) to make it easy to see
what speed you have it on. Now, with this new PS in, when turn the PS
on, I get a flash of lights on the front of the case, the fan spins for a
second and then the fan light goes very dim. Its still on, but very
faint. When I press the power button on the front of the case, still
nothing happens. When I turn the PS off, I get the same thing; fan light
gets bright, fan spins for a sec, lights on front of case, then the power
goes off.

unplugged everything, but 1 stick of RAM, 1 HD, and that's about it.

Thoughts, ideas, suggestions? Any help would be much appreciated.

A

About the only thing left is the motherboard itself. These power supplies
are fairly sensitive to overload, and will shut themselves down, which might
be what you are seeing happening when the lights dim.

In the last couple of years, there was an issue with ' fake ' electrolytic
capacitors which had been purchased by a number of far east MB
manufacturers, and incorporated into their products. These started to fail
in fairly short order, but some kept going for quite some time. As I recall,
the ones which gave most trouble, were all located physically around the CPU
chip, and you could see the tops of them bulging when they went bad.

Might be way off beam here, and there's probably others on here who might be
able to better advise you, but that's my two penn'orth anyway, for what it's
worth.

Arfa

"Jill" wrote in message
...
likely because it's a Dell, but I thought I would ask for help anyway.

So, here's the deal. Things been a POS from the get go, and spent the
last year sitting on a desk bearly used (maybe once a month). A couple
of months ago my system went down and the Dell became the new home office
computer. Since, it's been running 24hrs a day, as I never turn my
desktop off (for a number of reasons).

Last night I moved it from one room to another and set it back up and
when I pressed the power button, nothing happened. I held it down fir a
minute to try and reset it and turned the power bar off (which caused the
lights on the front of the case to light up breifly maybe as a means of
flushing any risidual power out?) and then turned the power back on
again. After pressing the power button a couple of more times in
frustration, IT STARTS!

Since its now in my bedroom, I turned it off when I was done and it
hasn't been willing to turn on again since. I spent some time screwing
with the button, but no go.

So, I figure its the power supply. Swapped it out for the one from the
broken system (since it was the mobo that went on that one) and I ended
up with a very strange result. The new PS is a Super Flower 350W/370W (?
if that makes sense) and has three fan settings. Each of these settings
has its own colour light (blue, green and red) to make it easy to see
what speed you have it on. Now, with this new PS in, when turn the PS
on, I get a flash of lights on the front of the case, the fan spins for a
second and then the fan light goes very dim. Its still on, but very
faint. When I press the power button on the front of the case, still
nothing happens. When I turn the PS off, I get the same thing; fan light
gets bright, fan spins for a sec, lights on front of case, then the power
goes off.

unplugged everything, but 1 stick of RAM, 1 HD, and that's about it.

Thoughts, ideas, suggestions? Any help would be much appreciated.

A


You don't say how old it is, but some years ago (around the PII era IIRC)
Dell were much criticised for switching the pinouts around on their power
supplies and motherboards, so you had to buy their exact replacements.
Fitting a standard ATX power supply was seemingly straightforward as there
was no obvious clue they were different, but as soon as it wss powered on,
there was catastrophic failure of the motherboard and/or the power supply,
or if one was lucky the power supply would just shut down before any damage
was done. I'd check the Dell power supply is indeed a standard type, which
it will be if it's fairly recent.

Dave

Dave D wrote:
"Jill" wrote in message
...
likely because it's a Dell, but I thought I would ask for help anyway.

So, here's the deal. Things been a POS from the get go, and spent the
last year sitting on a desk bearly used (maybe once a month). A couple
of months ago my system went down and the Dell became the new home office
computer. Since, it's been running 24hrs a day, as I never turn my
desktop off (for a number of reasons).

Last night I moved it from one room to another and set it back up and
when I pressed the power button, nothing happened. I held it down fir a
minute to try and reset it and turned the power bar off (which caused the
lights on the front of the case to light up breifly maybe as a means of
flushing any risidual power out?) and then turned the power back on
again. After pressing the power button a couple of more times in
frustration, IT STARTS!

Since its now in my bedroom, I turned it off when I was done and it
hasn't been willing to turn on again since. I spent some time screwing
with the button, but no go.

So, I figure its the power supply. Swapped it out for the one from the
broken system (since it was the mobo that went on that one) and I ended
up with a very strange result. The new PS is a Super Flower 350W/370W (?
if that makes sense) and has three fan settings. Each of these settings
has its own colour light (blue, green and red) to make it easy to see
what speed you have it on. Now, with this new PS in, when turn the PS
on, I get a flash of lights on the front of the case, the fan spins for a
second and then the fan light goes very dim. Its still on, but very
faint. When I press the power button on the front of the case, still
nothing happens. When I turn the PS off, I get the same thing; fan light
gets bright, fan spins for a sec, lights on front of case, then the power
goes off.

unplugged everything, but 1 stick of RAM, 1 HD, and that's about it.

Thoughts, ideas, suggestions? Any help would be much appreciated.

A


You don't say how old it is, but some years ago (around the PII era IIRC)
Dell were much criticised for switching the pinouts around on their power
supplies and motherboards, so you had to buy their exact replacements.
Fitting a standard ATX power supply was seemingly straightforward as there
was no obvious clue they were different, but as soon as it wss powered on,
there was catastrophic failure of the motherboard and/or the power supply,
or if one was lucky the power supply would just shut down before any damage
was done. I'd check the Dell power supply is indeed a standard type, which
it will be if it's fairly recent.

Dave

One other thing to try if it's a model that has one, is the riser
board. I used to have to support a site that had a bunch of Optiplex
GX1's and about half of them wouldn't power up with their riser boards
in 'em after a year or so. A documented Dell defect... Pull the riser
if it's got one and see if it fires up.

it's a fairly new machine; probably just 2 years. Thinking P4 2.3ghz or
thereabouts.

What a disaster.

Arfa's comments about the PS overloading and shutting down seem to fit
what I am seeing with the lights, but I have carefully inspected all the
capacitors and there doesn't seem to be any visable evidence. Also, it's
a dimension desktop and erverything I read about the capacitor problems
are on Optiplex MBs.

Not quite sure what is next; probably a $30 charge to get it looked at by
one of the local shops.

Thx for the info,

A



"Dave D" wrote in
news

"Jill" wrote in message
...
likely because it's a Dell, but I thought I would ask for help
anyway.

So, here's the deal. Things been a POS from the get go, and spent
the last year sitting on a desk bearly used (maybe once a month). A
couple of months ago my system went down and the Dell became the new
home office computer. Since, it's been running 24hrs a day, as I
never turn my desktop off (for a number of reasons).

Last night I moved it from one room to another and set it back up and
when I pressed the power button, nothing happened. I held it down
fir a minute to try and reset it and turned the power bar off (which
caused the lights on the front of the case to light up breifly maybe
as a means of flushing any risidual power out?) and then turned the
power back on again. After pressing the power button a couple of
more times in frustration, IT STARTS!

Since its now in my bedroom, I turned it off when I was done and it
hasn't been willing to turn on again since. I spent some time
screwing with the button, but no go.

So, I figure its the power supply. Swapped it out for the one from
the broken system (since it was the mobo that went on that one) and I
ended up with a very strange result. The new PS is a Super Flower
350W/370W (? if that makes sense) and has three fan settings. Each
of these settings has its own colour light (blue, green and red) to
make it easy to see what speed you have it on. Now, with this new PS
in, when turn the PS on, I get a flash of lights on the front of the
case, the fan spins for a second and then the fan light goes very
dim. Its still on, but very faint. When I press the power button on
the front of the case, still nothing happens. When I turn the PS
off, I get the same thing; fan light gets bright, fan spins for a
sec, lights on front of case, then the power goes off.

unplugged everything, but 1 stick of RAM, 1 HD, and that's about it.

Thoughts, ideas, suggestions? Any help would be much appreciated.

A


You don't say how old it is, but some years ago (around the PII era
IIRC) Dell were much criticised for switching the pinouts around on
their power supplies and motherboards, so you had to buy their exact
replacements. Fitting a standard ATX power supply was seemingly
straightforward as there was no obvious clue they were different, but
as soon as it wss powered on, there was catastrophic failure of the
motherboard and/or the power supply, or if one was lucky the power
supply would just shut down before any damage was done. I'd check the
Dell power supply is indeed a standard type, which it will be if it's
fairly recent.

Dave

"Kevin S." wrote in
ups.com:


Dave D wrote:
"Jill" wrote in message
...
likely because it's a Dell, but I thought I would ask for help
anyway.

So, here's the deal. Things been a POS from the get go, and spent
the last year sitting on a desk bearly used (maybe once a month).
A couple of months ago my system went down and the Dell became the
new home office computer. Since, it's been running 24hrs a day, as
I never turn my desktop off (for a number of reasons).

Last night I moved it from one room to another and set it back up
and when I pressed the power button, nothing happened. I held it
down fir a minute to try and reset it and turned the power bar off
(which caused the lights on the front of the case to light up
breifly maybe as a means of flushing any risidual power out?) and
then turned the power back on again. After pressing the power
button a couple of more times in frustration, IT STARTS!

Since its now in my bedroom, I turned it off when I was done and it
hasn't been willing to turn on again since. I spent some time
screwing with the button, but no go.

So, I figure its the power supply. Swapped it out for the one from
the broken system (since it was the mobo that went on that one) and
I ended up with a very strange result. The new PS is a Super
Flower 350W/370W (? if that makes sense) and has three fan
settings. Each of these settings has its own colour light (blue,
green and red) to make it easy to see what speed you have it on.
Now, with this new PS in, when turn the PS on, I get a flash of
lights on the front of the case, the fan spins for a second and
then the fan light goes very dim. Its still on, but very faint.
When I press the power button on the front of the case, still
nothing happens. When I turn the PS off, I get the same thing; fan
light gets bright, fan spins for a sec, lights on front of case,
then the power goes off.

unplugged everything, but 1 stick of RAM, 1 HD, and that's about
it.

Thoughts, ideas, suggestions? Any help would be much appreciated.

A


You don't say how old it is, but some years ago (around the PII era
IIRC) Dell were much criticised for switching the pinouts around on
their power supplies and motherboards, so you had to buy their exact
replacements. Fitting a standard ATX power supply was seemingly
straightforward as there was no obvious clue they were different, but
as soon as it wss powered on, there was catastrophic failure of the
motherboard and/or the power supply, or if one was lucky the power
supply would just shut down before any damage was done. I'd check the
Dell power supply is indeed a standard type, which it will be if it's
fairly recent.

Dave

One other thing to try if it's a model that has one, is the riser
board. I used to have to support a site that had a bunch of Optiplex
GX1's and about half of them wouldn't power up with their riser boards
in 'em after a year or so. A documented Dell defect... Pull the riser
if it's got one and see if it fires up.



Its a Dimension 4600.

Sorry, should have added that to my earlier post.

Cheers,

A

Jill wrote:
it's a fairly new machine; probably just 2 years. Thinking P4 2.3ghz or
thereabouts.

What a disaster.

Arfa's comments about the PS overloading and shutting down seem to fit
what I am seeing with the lights, but I have carefully inspected all the
capacitors and there doesn't seem to be any visable evidence. Also, it's
a dimension desktop and erverything I read about the capacitor problems
are on Optiplex MBs.

Not quite sure what is next; probably a $30 charge to get it looked at by
one of the local shops.

Thx for the info,

Hi...

If it hasn't already been suggested one thing you might
want to try is pulling out cards one by one - ie pull the
video card, see if there's any (lights) difference when you
try to start it. Do the same with network card, sound card,
and so on. Perhaps one of them is faulty.

Maybe even try the same trick with the floppy and cd etc
power connectors.

Take care.

Ken

Jill:
Gosh..... for just $30..... take it to the shop and stop guessing and
worrying.
electricitym

Jill wrote:
likely because it's a Dell, but I thought I would ask for help anyway.

So, here's the deal. Things been a POS from the get go, and spent the
last year sitting on a desk bearly used (maybe once a month). A couple
of months ago my system went down and the Dell became the new home office
computer. Since, it's been running 24hrs a day, as I never turn my
desktop off (for a number of reasons).

Last night I moved it from one room to another and set it back up and
when I pressed the power button, nothing happened. I held it down fir a
minute to try and reset it and turned the power bar off (which caused the
lights on the front of the case to light up breifly maybe as a means of
flushing any risidual power out?) and then turned the power back on
again. After pressing the power button a couple of more times in
frustration, IT STARTS!

Since its now in my bedroom, I turned it off when I was done and it
hasn't been willing to turn on again since. I spent some time screwing
with the button, but no go.

Jill--

I had a similiar problem with an older 1.4G unit. After some
experimentation discoverved that if I held a hair blower on high cool
at the back of the power supply and spun up the fan for a few seconds,
then attempted to boot the computer the unit would start--but the hair
blower couldn't be shutoff until the total boot sequence was complete.
Once the unit was up and running the hair dryer could be removed and
the unit worked fine until shutdown. Then get out the hair
dryer--finally bought new computer.

Good luck

Tut