Is my computer dead? Dell 530S Slim tower

[udonoogen]

Overview of the problem

Computer will not start.

Full description of the problem and symptoms

Last week, I pushed the button to turn my computer on, and my computer beeped once and stayed on the DELL screen. It says push F2 or F12 but my keyboard doesn't work. I googled for some help as I usually do and was unable to find anything that worked. I unplugged my keyboard to see if it would give me a keyboard error and that didn't work. So I unplugged everything and that didn't work either. The keyboard is non-responsive, both my wireless and a USB one I plugged in. I gave up building computers a couple years ago because of all the problems that come with customizing it to my liking and thought a pre-made Dell would be lacking such issues. So wrong, huh! =)

I have a pretty thick Energizer surge protector with a backup battery. We had a couple of outages last week that maybe went through this protector and fried the mobo? I think this is unlikely given the surge protector, but its possible.

Did it work normally at one time, or has the problem always existed?

It's a computer that's a little over a year old. It has always worked.

Is the problem consistent and repeatable, or entirely random, or semi-random?

It doesn't work. This is a repeatable problem.

I already tried these steps:

Turning on, turning off. Turning on, turning off. Unplugging everything, plugging everything back in.

My software:
Vista

My hardware
Dell 530S (slim tower)


I suspect it's a motherboard problem. Will it help if I somehow clear the CMOS? Is that possible on a Dell mobo? Can I flash the BIOS somehow if the keyboard doesn't even work?

I should be able to recover everything on my hard drive, right?

 

[mpilchfamily]

Yes clear the CMOS. Unplug the system then remove the battery on the motherboard. Let a minute pass then put it all back together. That will peossibly remody any KB/USB issues. But since its not even going into the OS there may be an issue with the HDD or just the OS.

 

[udonoogen]

hooray! clearing the cmos works. it gave me funny errors though upon rebooting ... the computer thought i had a floppy and gave me an error. also it took a long time to boot up. super scary ... so i backed up all my vital documents, fixed the boot sequence in the bios (to the best of my knowledge), and ran disk defrag. hopefully it fixes everything. THANK YOU mpilchfamily. i love anandtech.

 

[mpilchfamily]

After clearing the CMOS you did go into the bios and redu all the settings you had before right? Especially the time and date settings. Otehrwise Windows will give you problems if the date and time are older then many of the updates that are installed.

 

[Laputa]

You might as well update the BIOS if there are any that you can find and get from Dell's web site.

 

[Ausm]

Originally posted by: Laputa
You might as well update the BIOS if there are any that you can find and get from Dell's web site.

You are taking your mobo's life into your own hands doing that especially on Dell's website 🙂

 

[udonoogen]

Originally posted by: Ausm

Originally posted by: Laputa
You might as well update the BIOS if there are any that you can find and get from Dell's web site.

You are taking your mobo's life into your own hands doing that especially on Dell's website 🙂

its out of warranty anyway so i dont think they'd even think of helping fix it. i'm probably paranoid but i still think something is wrong with it. i may update the bios and format the computer just for the heck of it. the computer is still running the pre-installed OS. thanks again, guys

 

[Kraeoss]

well you can always buy a new board and put your chip in it....

 

[heymrdj]

At BNC, we see tons of these slim systems with dieing motheboards. I've changed out 5 personally already this year. I think it's the heat. If you open one, you'll see they have one fan, which sucks cold air in, cools the processor, then that heated air blows out the back, which is expected to "cool" the motherboard, NB, SB, and hard drive. If anything I find the hard drive getting even hotter from it. Especially when they were using the Pentium D's.