Crappy Dell. Need advice

Dogboy73

Dogboy73

Dogboy73

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693
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My sisters Dell has stopped working ....... again! Pile of junk they really are. But can anyone help me with this problem - The power bottom is flashing intermittently & the machine won't boot. This has happened before & on this occasion the PSU was replaced by a Dell technician. So off we went to PC World & bought a new PSU. I've just installed this & the problem is the same - no boot & that flashing start button.

On one occassion & was able to boot. I'm not sure what I did but I had been removing some cables, RAM, gfx card etc & then replaced these. Eventually we got back into Windows, which seemed okay. We powered down & tried to start up again but the problem re-occured. ARGGHHH!! What does that flashing button mean?! Anyone had a Dell & familiar with this problem?

Any advice apart from chuck the damn thing out the window?:)
 
It's a Dell Dimension 5100.

Not sure about the diagnostic CD. I'll have to ask my sister if she's has that.


Just found this on the Dell site;

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Dogboy73 said:
Found this as well;

http://blog.plaxoed.com/2006/06/26/dell-problems/
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I read through this entire thread last night. It seems that the 'amber light syndrome' is quite a common occurance on Dell systems once the warranty period expires. It also seems to be caused by a plethora of problems often prompting costly replacements by Dell. It all sounds very dodgy.

I just wish I had not advised my sister to buy a Dell because they were affordable. If I knew then what I know now I would have built a PC for her. I'm back round my sisters tonight. I'm going to try a few more things & then ring Dell. No doubt I'll have to go through the absolutely useless phone support advice of stripping everything out of the machine even though I've already been through all this myself.
 
We had a few go down with the Amber Power Light of Death at work (well my old work place!). Mostly GX520's or the older GX280's - it was bad motherboard on the 280s and bad PSU on the 520's, however, the Dell Diagnostic CD or Hard Drive partition will run very good diagnostics and can pinpoint where the problem is.

Dell buisness machines seem to be bullet proof as we had hundreds and only a few went wrong.
 
Thanks for the link. Some interesting info in there. I was starting to think it was the mobo ........... then again I was able to boot one time. If the mobo was shot how could I possibly have done that?
 
Power supply could have surged it. Try just booting with RAM and graphics, no drives or other expansion cards plugged in. Also, try different RAM and graphics if possible :)
 
Found the problem. I did a bit of research last night & found a post from a PC technician that was working on a customers machine. It was a Dell machine & was also suffering from 'flashing amber LED syndrome'. It turned out to be one of the USB ports that had been damaged by, possibly, the client jamming a USB device into the socket the wrong way. The pins had been mangled up & were now touching the outer part of the USB socket, causing a short & bringing on a bout of 'flashing amber LED syndrome'.

My neice is currently 2 years old & at the age were she's jamming things into every nook & cranny she comes accross. I wondered if she might have tried to push something into the USB slot. It was the first thing I checked when I got to my sisters last night & sure enough the inside of the port was all mangled up, with one of the 4 pins touching the outer part of the socket. I straightened them up with a screwdriver & it fired up first time with no problems.
 
PinkPig said:
As far as reliability is concerned, Dell seem to have a very good reputation. It certainly seems to be fairly unusual for them to stop working.
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agree 100%. we've got approx 250+ optiplex, latitude and 20 odd poweredge.

last hardware issue we had was down to the user (latitude had to go back to factory due to spillage on keyboard lol). even that was turned around extremely quickly.

had a replacement redundant poweredge PSU arrive 3 hours after the call was logged before too. now THATS service.. :cool:
 
They're so bad they even swap out GX280 boards that are not covered by warranty any longer as it's a known production defect. Humble pie time i'm afraid :D
 
Avalon said:
They're so bad they even swap out GX280 boards that are not covered by warranty any longer as it's a known production defect. Humble pie time i'm afraid :D
Click to expand...

They dropped the ball on the GX280. However, out of the 25 we had only one went wrong because of that problem and they are nearly four years old now.
 
neil_g said:
are you going to appologies for all the dell abuse now? ;)
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Well maybe they're not as bad as I made out. But my sisters machine has had so much go wrong with it over the 2 years she has had it. I also maintain that Dell's phone-in technical support is about as much use as a cat flap in an elephant house.
 
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