Deader than a doornail?

[unevendozen]

Hello worthy techies!

I am hopeful you might be able to shed some light on an issue I am having.

My wife's computer died a few days ago. We were sitting on the couch watching Chuck when it suddenly turned off, flashing an orange light on the tower's power button. It is normally green when powered on and goes dark when you turn it off. The only way we found to get it to stop blinking orange was to hold the power button down for several seconds.

I tried opening the case and made sure all the connections I could find were nice and tight. Put it back together and pressed the power button. Nothing but blinking orange.

Because this is a Dell machine (a Dimension 9100 to be exact) I tried consulting with them. They advised it was a power issue. So I ordered a 550W Rosewill power supply from Newegg.com, sadly this did nothing. I think thought perhaps the motherboard battery had died, so I replaced that. No luck.

I am out of ideas. What could cause this? When you press that power button nothing happens, and I mean NOTHING. Fans dont start to turn, the drives dont attempt to spin... nothing. The only thought I have is that the mobo may have crapped out. Since the power button is wired to the motherboad and then the mobo is connected to the PSU, I suppose if there was a short somewhere it could cause this. Maybe?

Anyway, I would appreciate any thoughts or advice you have to offer.

Thanks!

 

[The Stigenator]

system overheated.. check if CPU fan is connected and working. most likely time to get a new mobo and restart.. i hate when things like this happens to PC's they make it so hard to diagnose.

Short of using a multi meter to check power levels, i say just get a new mobo and rebuild..

You can try for shits and giggles.. take out the memory, if it protests about that by beeping its atleast doing a POST check.

 

[unevendozen]

Thanks for the suggestion. I've had the case disassembled while working on it and I can say without a doubt that everything is connected, but nothing is working. You press that power button and nothing happens except the blinking orange light.


One question, will a normal ATX motherboad fit in Dell's case or are their cases made for their proprietary hardware?

 

[arcas]

Judging from Google, this is not an uncommon failure mode for Dell desktops. I quickly glanced at 7 or 8 hits on the flashing orange light problem where the problem had since been resolved. In all but one it was a mobo failure. The remaining case was a CPU failure.

 

[Vortex22]

I've seen it firsthand on two separate occasions with dimensions. One was a bad motherboard, the other was a bad CPU.

Originally posted by: unevendozen
One question, will a normal ATX motherboad fit in Dell's case or are their cases made for their proprietary hardware?

I don't know for certain with that model, but I know in the past dell has used proprietary power connectors for the mobo, so you might need a new power supply if you are replacing it with a non dell part.