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Almost but not quite power up...
Can't seem to find any post that matches this power up issue. I have 2 Inspiron 530's (Core2 Quad Q8300 with 350W PSU, 1 HDD, DVD Drive, GeForce 9400GT) bought at same time (7/7/2009) and one started having issue first but now the second has developed same issue - they been great workhorses until now. Here is the symptom...
System is powered down. When you push the power button you get a momentary attempt to start up...the CPU and Chassis fans kick on for a brief pulse and then nothing. Basically the start-up attempt is for about 1 second...about as long as it takes you to say "vroom". If you hold the power button down it will do this false start over and over on a roughly 2 second cycle period....vroom, vroom, vroom over and over. Nothing with this issue is predictable and you get some random success results...random success (BTW once they do start up they run fine for days - if you restart for any reason, say a software update, you run the random risk of getting into the no start loop)
- sometimes if you leave power off for a long period (hours/overnight) you can get it to power up fine ...or not
- sometimes it will false start for many cycles and finally actually successfully starts...or not
- sometimes if you disconnect chassis fan or CPU fan or both you can get it to start...or not
Anyone seen this before??? It's strange that one machine started this issue about 3 months ago and I have been debating replacing PSU (maybe it's not quite enough umf left to start this PC up - although its not like it has much in it drawing power) or seen a few posts on start-up issues that pointed to dying MoBo Battery...basically though once I get it running I just leave it up for weeks and cross my fingers on reboots that it starts up (if not I just go through the random things above until I get lucky). But now this second PC is doing the same thing so I need to do something as I can't fight both of them.
fireberd
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January 13th, 2012 07:00
I would suspect the power supply, but it could be a problem on the motherboard. I don't think the 530's had any capacitor problems but closely examine the capacitors on the motherboard to see if any are leaking.
Unfortunately the only way to really test a power supply is to replace it with a known good supply. Dell does not use a proprietary power supply so any standard ATX will work. My suggestion to users replacing power supplies with standard ATX style is to get a "modular" style as that eliminates a lot of the unused cable clutter in the case (that can affect air flow). If you are replacing a Dell, you need a higher rated power supply, e.g. in your case a 400 watt minimum power supply and a good grade power supply as the inexpensive power supplies tend to be overrated (watts) and have poor DC voltage regulation (that could cause a motherboard failure). www.newegg.com has a good selection of power supplies and where I buy most of my computer parts.
steveEng181
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January 17th, 2012 06:00
Ok, I have a similar problem on a D518, went through all the dust,reseat,pray,threaten steps, so i accepted my fate and began poking around at the PSU, when I moved the bundle of snakes going into the box -- It fired up!, like a trust it, right?
Fireberd, thanks for the ATX tip and NewEgg, I am off to their site for a PSU -- hope it works -- if not maybe its some Mayan neutrino burst, nah! Thanks
dfamilytech
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January 17th, 2012 07:00
Well as fate would have it, this weekend the PSU fan bearings on one of the machine's stated to whine and grind so that set my course...off to buy a new PSU (actually 2). Of course no sooner than I got around to placing the order the darn thing decided to stop whining and went back to normal. At this point though I am waiting for the PSU's and as soon as I can get them I will just swap both machines' PSU's and MoBo batts and see where that gets me.
speedstep
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January 17th, 2012 11:00
I would not continue to run with failing power supplies. If they fail the wrong way they will zorch everything leaving you with a pile of dead junk.