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signalfuture

2 Posts

29999

March 25th, 2013 21:00

Dell Dimension E520 replaced hard drive now only have blinking cursor no Bios

Hi, 

My friend wanted to get rid of his dell E520, and removed then destroyed the hard drives.

He gave it to me to do as I please, so I installed a replacement hard drive, but all that 

happens now is a black screen with blinking cursor at the top left, no dell splash screen,

though it did appear once only to hang on that and do nothing else,

since then it just has the cursor, there is no response from the keyboard to enter bios by tapping

F2 or F12, the lights do not appear on the keyboard either and the mouse sensor light blinks 

once after pressing the start button.

I read through various forum posts and replaced the 3v battery as it was suggested to do for 

an old machine, but to no benefit as yet.

Please help me , I would like to perhaps install a Linux OS if I get it working.

Thankyou.

DELL-Chinmay S

1.8K Posts

March 25th, 2013 22:00

Hi signalfuture,

You may drain out the residual power of computer by following the steps below:

  • Power off the system from the power button or the wall jack.
  • Disconnect the power cable from the wall jack and remove all the cables connected to the back of system tower including the power cable.
  • Press and hold the power button pressed for 30 seconds.
  • Connect the power cable, keyboard and monitor cable only.
  • Power on the system. 

You may also check the status of the light on power button and the diagnostic indicators on the rear of system tower. Another step you may try is to remove the CMOS battery of your computer and then try powering on the computer. Check if you get any error message on screen. If the issue persists, re-seat the CMOS battery and then try powering on the computer. For detailed information on this, you may refer to the service manual of computer: http://bit.ly/VkdC84 

Ensure to follow safety instructions in manual. Please make sure that every component (including hard drive, memory etc.) is seated and connected properly.

Please share the findings. 

signalfuture

2 Posts

March 26th, 2013 01:00

That helped me very much, I basically tried all the Ram modules by themselves, then took out the GPU, got to the BIOS after that, then reinserted the GPU which then worked, so now I am installing the OS, thankyou

DELL-Chinmay S

1.8K Posts

March 26th, 2013 03:00

Hi signalfuture,

I am glad that the issue is resolved. 

Please feel free to get in touch in case you have any further questions. 

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