Dell XPS-8900 Will Not Start

I had four external USB3 drives attached, two powered and two are Seagate Wireless drives -- one of which is recharged via it USB port. Unplugging only that second Seagate drive lets the machine start up. So the issue may be too much of a current drain on the USB board.

Replacing the Seagate Wireless drive which recharges from its USB port by a passive 3TB USB3 drive results in a normal start up. So it looks like that drive is the culprit. Works fine once started, just not good to restart with that particular drive attached.

I'd try it on my Inspiron, but that likely would tell me little. The inspiron has 3rd party USB3 ports installed via one of the expansion ports. Behavior might be normal and mean little re the XPS-8900 configuration.

BTW -- using either front or rear USB3 port on the XPS-8900 gives me the same no-start result with that wireless drive attached, not a surprise.

Phil

Have you tried going back to the original power cable and original outlet? Could the new outlet be overloaded or the new cable be defective/inadequate? You can try this: Power off and remove power cord from rear of PC Press/hold power button for ~30 sec Reconnect power cord to rear of PC See if it boots now

Yes, that's the first thing I tried, Ron. But it appears the issue is too much power load on the USB bus -- not an issue I saw with my Inspiron (which I still have), but this may be the first time I've done a cold start (vs. from Sleep) with that particular Seagate Wireless drive attached.  And since it is charged via it's USB port (the older one has a separate power port) it may make sense that it would load the USB bus more than another drive.

Does the USB bus loading cause such a start up problem make sense to you, Ron? First time I've seen it!

Phil

Glad you figured it out. USB drives can misbehave for various reasons.

You might check to see if Seagate has a firmware update or some other fix for that troublesome drive to address this problem.

Had the exact same problem with mine, but I think it's blinking once, pausing and then blinking twice and then repeating.  Went online to Dell to try and find the error codes for this with no luck.  Will enjoy reading your post to see how it was resolved.

Hmm, read the result and it seems like I have a different problem.  I'm using one USB 3.0 port on the back and it is connected to a 7 port USB 3.0 hub with it's own power supply that has 4 amps output.  I added a second video card so I can run five monitors. 8-)  It's not a top of the line video card and does not need or have a power plug and draws power from the Blue PCI video slot.  As I don't play video games, I didn't buy a faster one as I just need more screens.  I thought it had something to do with the video card driver and downloaded that.  I finally got three screens to work, two from the Dell video card and one from the added video card.  The Dell card is not an onboard video card and is a separate discrete card in a PCI slot.  Thought I had fixed the problem and was enjoying it for a day.  When I rebooted it, it did the one blink, two blink dance again.  8-(  Somewhere there has to be an article on what the blinking means.  I did find a chart for the older OptiPlex models but not the XPS series.  Hopefully someone has some clues.  Thanks

Glad you figured it out. USB drives can misbehave for various reasons. You might check to see if Seagate has a firmware update or some other fix for that troublesome drive to address this problem.

It has the latest firmware. But the PSU brick that came with it is rated at 10 W (2 A @ 5 V). 2 Amps is probably quite a load on the USB bus; not sure how it is rated.

My Inspiron had other USB issues (but that had a 3rd-party expansion I added). Using a wireless mouse-kbd combo plugged into a USB2 port drove the USB3 ports nuts -- so now I use only wired mouse and keyboard.

Phil

Hmm, read the result and it seems like I have a different problem.  I'm using one USB 3.0 port on the back and it is connected to a 7 port USB 3.0 hub with it's own power supply that has 4 amps output.  I added a second video card so I can run five monitors. 8-)  It's not a top of the line video card and does not need or have a power plug and draws power from the Blue PCI video slot.  As I don't play video games, I didn't buy a faster one as I just need more screens.  I thought it had something to do with the video card driver and downloaded that.  I finally got three screens to work, two from the Dell video card and one from the added video card.  The Dell card is not an onboard video card and is a separate discrete card in a PCI slot.  Thought I had fixed the problem and was enjoying it for a day.  When I rebooted it, it did the one blink, two blink dance again.  8-(  Somewhere there has to be an article on what the blinking means.  I did find a chart for the older OptiPlex models but not the XPS series.  Hopefully someone has some clues.  Thanks

I'd try removing everything not native to the machine -- first the USB hub, then the added-in video card -- and see if your problem is resolved.

I had the same one-blink, two-blink dance until I removed the one USB HDD (which has its own rechargeable battery and can draw 2 Amps according to PSU spec). Your powered USB hub could have a problem, or perhaps the video card does.

I'm hoping Dell will reply to this as the blinking codes do mean something.  I'm using the PC now without the 2nd video card.  Have been researching them and was surprised that the card in this machine is not Directx 12.  This PC was a replacement for my 3 year old custom built one.  Basically I unplugged everything and re-plugged it into this PC.  The old machine worked great but I wanted an i7 processor and 32GB of memory.  The old machine is now my backup machine to the Dell.  I've worked at two different PC companies and know they use custom software for diagnostic purposes.  Also I did have Dell scan / troubleshoot this pc with thier custom software online and they found no problems.  Would have that the failed boots and errors blinking on the power button would have shown up in a log file somewhere. 8-)

I pinged my Dell tech contacts and asked if the blink patterns are documented anywhere that's publicly available. May take a day or 3 for a response because they've been off for the holidays so please be patient. 

Countryfarmboy - Which slot are you using for your second add-in video card? The second PCIe x16 slot in the XPS 8900 is only wired as x4, meaning it only gets 4 lanes for traffic. The true x16 slot with the factory add-in video card gets 16 lanes.

Is the card you installed documented to be fully x4 compatible? Or are you forcing an x16 card to run at one-quarter its intended speed?

Do you actually need a second video card? Could you run 2 monitors on the add-in video card, 2 on the onboard video and use a USB>video dongle for the 5th one?

Wow, Why would Dell use a x16 slot and only have it wired as a x4?  Sounds pretty crazy to me.  I see a x4 slot and know that that is a x4.  Currently I moved the factory card to the bottom x16 slot and used the blue slot for my  other video card.  I've read other posts where the onboard video is disabled when a discrete video card is used but did see a post by someone saying that there is an option in the BOIS somewhere and I'm going to go check that one out now as I reboot my computer with the factory video card back in the blue x16 slot.  Haven't read much about USB video cards but will check.  I really will use only 4 displays with a 5th one for my projector and could add a switch that with a RGB switch if I had to.  Thanks for your expert input. 

I'm using the PC now without the 2nd video card.

Did that make the issue go away?

Phil

Well I moved the video card back to the blue x16 and the pc wouldn't boot again and I got the one blink two blink dance again.  I ended up removing everything that was plugged in and held the power button for 15 seconds and I was able to get it running again.  I did boot into the Bios and the dual monitor option was enabled and the auto select feature was checked which lets the Bios select between the Intel Matrix onboard video card and the NVidia discrete video card supplied by Dell.   I haven't plugged in an HDMI monitor yet to see if the onboard video ports are enabled.  On other PC I have built, when a video card is installed, it disables the onboard video.  On a side note, I did look into the USB video card and saw some great reviews.  I bought one many years ago when they were USB 1.0 and wasn't impressed.  Hopefully one of your Dell tech can come through with what the blink codes mean. 8-)

Glad you got it running again.

According to my Dell tech contact, the power button blink code is not documented. But given that both of you had USB devices (HDD or USB hub) connected, it's possible (not proven) the system is detecting a non-bootable device.

No telling what will happen if the x16 factory add-in video card is in the x16(x4) slot. x4 is certainly not enough lanes for decent video output.

The x16(x4) slot lets users install an x16 size card that's compatible with x4 speed.

"non-bootable drive is connected".