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Inspiron 530s - Amber light nightmare!
Hi Foks
I am new to the forum so excuse lack of techno stuff
I purchased the above for a customer in Sept 2008 (20 months ago). The deskop now has a solid amber light and has nothing showing on the screen. On reading other forums they indicate there could be a problem with the psu or motherboard.
I have tried several scenarios with differing results. I removed the psu and had it checked - appears to be working correctly. On starting up the desktop the fans all work (there are no POST beeps). I removed CMOS batter, memory, all power cables, cd drive, hard drive.
Yesterday, I had a blue light and managed to start the desktop updated the CMOS settings, stopped the machine looking for A:drive and hey presto managed to log into the operating system. I checked internet connectivity, opened email and a few files. Stopped and restated the machine serveral time - booted up no probs. Hey presto - I thought I'd fixed it :emotion-2:
How wrong I was....on starting the desktop this morning I am back to sold amber light, fans starting up (no beeps) and no screen - HELP!!! :emotion-14:
I am a little frustrated as the customer (old folks) are without their belowved internet and there appears to be no help other than this forum.
I had a chat with DELL to enquire about a price for a new motherboard or psu - they don't hold spare parts and sent me to www.upgrade.co.uk. The customer don't really have the money to buy parts on a whim!
Vista Home Premium
250GB SERIAL ATA
2GB Ram
Any ideas much appreciated.
Ali
Dev Mgr
9.3K Posts
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May 28th, 2010 06:00
A solid amber light is usually a power related issue (see online troubleshooting guide for the 530s).
<ADMIN NOTE: Broken link has been removed from this post by Dell>
This doesn't mean necessarily that the powersupply is bad though; it could be a faulty harddrive causing a short, or an issue with the power distribution on the motherboard.
I would suggest to disconnect power and data from all drives, remove all expansion cards, disconnect all keyboards, mice, monitors, printers, etc, remove all memory and try to power up the system. If everything goes according to play you should be a blinking amber light and a 1-3-2 beepcode. If however you still get solid amber and no beeps, you're down to the motherboard, processor and/or powersupply being the source of your problem.
Ali27
3 Posts
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May 28th, 2010 08:00
Hi Dev Mgr
Thanks for the speedy response. I have done the above and no beeps - still amber. Occassionally I do get a solid blue light as if its going to boot but no display on the screen.
Do you know where I can get a replacement motherboard/processor from?
Ali :-)
Jester217
5 Posts
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July 16th, 2010 00:00
Hi Ali,
You can try the following before you buy the stuff.
To test if something is wrong with your powersupply or motherboard do the following:
Disconnect the power
remove the i/o cable for the front i/o module (the one with the powerbutton)
then remove the bios battery for 20 secondes. And then but the battery back in it's place
Plug the power back in and see what happens.. in my case the whole machine begins to boot up.
So no problems with the powersupply and motherboard. It was a defective i/o module.
Jester
Ali27
3 Posts
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July 20th, 2010 02:00
Hi Jester
Thanks for the response.
It was the motherboard in the end. Had a 30 min session with Dell technical support and they then agreed faulty motherboard.
Replacement installed by engineer and now working fine.
Desktop only 18 months old so not very good as far as wear and tear are concerned. Hey ho - at least its sorted and the customer has her pc back for "silver surfing".
Thanks again.
:-)