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Dell XPS 400 - half dead?

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dewdude82

Junior Member
Hey all,

Back in March my uncle's house sadly caught fire. His Dell XPS 400 was sitting in his basement. While only the top floor burned, the basement got completely flooded with water and foam.

The computer pretty much has set from then till yesterday when he brought it over and I started seeing what I could do with it. When I plugged it in, the LED on the motherboard came on and the lights on the network port flashed on, press the power button and no one comes out to play.

I figured maybe the PS got wet and one of the outputs trashed, the only spare PS I had laying around, also from a dell, only had 20 pins. I aligned it up to the left side of the connector making sure the wire colors matched. Again, same deal, network card flashes showing it's powered on, the green led marked "aux power" comes on...but the board will not boot.

What's the likelyhood that the thing is fine I'm just missing something very simple? Anyone got suggestions or am I better off stripping the thing for parts?
 
water you can probably dry out. Foam? I'm not so sure.

If the electronics are done, you might be able to rescue the hard drive at least and get his data off.
 
My uncle isn't worried about the data...he said he never kept anything important on it. I'd like to get this system running because it seems like it'd be a nice box once i upgrade the ram.

I removed the side and, seriously, everything inside looks just fine. I see no rust, no water spots...no real evidence that anything inside got too wet..it's mostly just the outside of the case that looks bad.

like i said, i'm mostly trying to figure out where to go with it. I've got a 24-pin powersupply lying around i believe...i just have to dig it up. I guess mostly what I'm wondering is if maybe the LED's i'm seeing aren't actually telling me anything...but it seems like it's just not getting the signal to boot up...but again i know nothing about how these dell boards work....everything's so propritary.
 
I would recommend a can of contact cleaner (radio shack has it or any good electronics store for that matter) Strip it down and clean each component as best you can. Then when you reassemble it start with the basics mobo/ram/cpu/video and see if you get post.
 
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