PC Won't Start Up
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Here's an odd one... A coworker brought in a relatively new Dell that would not respond in any way to pressing the On switch. I tested the switch - works great. I jumpered the PS-ON pin on the power supply to ground and it fired up perfectly. I reconnected the switch, removed all the loads (disk drives, unnecessary expansion cards, RAM, etc) and tried again - no response. I measured the voltage at the PS-ON connection to the MB while pressing the ON switch - no change. I reported all the symptoms to Dell, having decided the the MB has a problem, and they agreed. A replacement MB and power supply were shipped and installed. The same problem continues.:sigh: Am I missing something obvious, or is this box infected with gremlins? "...putting all your eggs in one basket along with your bowling ball and gym clothes only gets you scrambled eggs and an extra laundry day... " - Jeffry J. Brickley
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Here's an odd one... A coworker brought in a relatively new Dell that would not respond in any way to pressing the On switch. I tested the switch - works great. I jumpered the PS-ON pin on the power supply to ground and it fired up perfectly. I reconnected the switch, removed all the loads (disk drives, unnecessary expansion cards, RAM, etc) and tried again - no response. I measured the voltage at the PS-ON connection to the MB while pressing the ON switch - no change. I reported all the symptoms to Dell, having decided the the MB has a problem, and they agreed. A replacement MB and power supply were shipped and installed. The same problem continues.:sigh: Am I missing something obvious, or is this box infected with gremlins? "...putting all your eggs in one basket along with your bowling ball and gym clothes only gets you scrambled eggs and an extra laundry day... " - Jeffry J. Brickley
Roger Wright wrote: Am I missing something obvious, or is this box infected with gremlins? Did you check for continuity in the wires going from the connector to the switch? Also, have you inspected the connector to verify that the little prongs are making contact with the pins on the MB? Probably really hard to do though. Marc My website
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Roger Wright wrote: Am I missing something obvious, or is this box infected with gremlins? Did you check for continuity in the wires going from the connector to the switch? Also, have you inspected the connector to verify that the little prongs are making contact with the pins on the MB? Probably really hard to do though. Marc My website
Latest Articles: Undo/Redo Buffer Memento Design PatternMarc Clifton wrote: Probably really hard to do though. Yup! With what I have available, impossible. What I might try, though, when he brings the box back in, is shorting the pins on the motherboard that the switch should connect to. I can get on those - should have thought of it earlier...:doh: "...putting all your eggs in one basket along with your bowling ball and gym clothes only gets you scrambled eggs and an extra laundry day... " - Jeffry J. Brickley
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Here's an odd one... A coworker brought in a relatively new Dell that would not respond in any way to pressing the On switch. I tested the switch - works great. I jumpered the PS-ON pin on the power supply to ground and it fired up perfectly. I reconnected the switch, removed all the loads (disk drives, unnecessary expansion cards, RAM, etc) and tried again - no response. I measured the voltage at the PS-ON connection to the MB while pressing the ON switch - no change. I reported all the symptoms to Dell, having decided the the MB has a problem, and they agreed. A replacement MB and power supply were shipped and installed. The same problem continues.:sigh: Am I missing something obvious, or is this box infected with gremlins? "...putting all your eggs in one basket along with your bowling ball and gym clothes only gets you scrambled eggs and an extra laundry day... " - Jeffry J. Brickley
Roger Wright wrote: I measured the voltage at the PS-ON connection to the MB while pressing the ON switch - no change Does this mean when you press the power on switch the voltage on the switch line (measured on the motherboard) doesn't drop to ground ? It would be as simple as a dodgy connection and when it's at the angle to fit onto the motherboard the conenction is bad. Oh the joys on intermittent connections :sigh: The tigress is here :-D
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Here's an odd one... A coworker brought in a relatively new Dell that would not respond in any way to pressing the On switch. I tested the switch - works great. I jumpered the PS-ON pin on the power supply to ground and it fired up perfectly. I reconnected the switch, removed all the loads (disk drives, unnecessary expansion cards, RAM, etc) and tried again - no response. I measured the voltage at the PS-ON connection to the MB while pressing the ON switch - no change. I reported all the symptoms to Dell, having decided the the MB has a problem, and they agreed. A replacement MB and power supply were shipped and installed. The same problem continues.:sigh: Am I missing something obvious, or is this box infected with gremlins? "...putting all your eggs in one basket along with your bowling ball and gym clothes only gets you scrambled eggs and an extra laundry day... " - Jeffry J. Brickley
We did have a computer here that wouldn't start at all. Very puzzling. No heatsink on the processor (we were building it from bits, and wanted to make sure it worked, and were planning to turn it off straight away, so assumed we could do without the heatsink for testing). Then we put the heatsink on the processor, and it worked.
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Roger Wright wrote: I measured the voltage at the PS-ON connection to the MB while pressing the ON switch - no change Does this mean when you press the power on switch the voltage on the switch line (measured on the motherboard) doesn't drop to ground ? It would be as simple as a dodgy connection and when it's at the angle to fit onto the motherboard the conenction is bad. Oh the joys on intermittent connections :sigh: The tigress is here :-D
That could be, but there was no way to get on the switch connection other than the connector itself. At the MB end of the switch connection, the signal drops to ground correctly, but at the PS-ON connection to the power supply there is no response. I also removed the switch connector and manually shorted the pins with a paper clip - no response.:sigh: From the results of this I decided that the MB is probably bad, and contacted Dell support. They walked me through several other steps, then told me that the MB was probably bad.:doh: My buddy ordered a new MB and the power supply, then installed them himself. No joy. Ah well, can't win them all, I guess.:( "...putting all your eggs in one basket along with your bowling ball and gym clothes only gets you scrambled eggs and an extra laundry day... " - Jeffry J. Brickley
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We did have a computer here that wouldn't start at all. Very puzzling. No heatsink on the processor (we were building it from bits, and wanted to make sure it worked, and were planning to turn it off straight away, so assumed we could do without the heatsink for testing). Then we put the heatsink on the processor, and it worked.
Now that's just plain weird! It should have at least started, then fried in the first 30 seconds. "...putting all your eggs in one basket along with your bowling ball and gym clothes only gets you scrambled eggs and an extra laundry day... " - Jeffry J. Brickley