xps 710 wont boot, out of warranty, tried almost everything.

one other wierd thing i just remembered, each time i try to swap something i remove the power cable first, and when i button it all back up, as soon as i plug the power cord in it tries to power on without touching the power button on the front of the case.

yeah, dell really made me mad with the mobo, it was sold to me by their customer service people who clearly responded they were selling me a new board.  when i opened the box it says refurb all over it.  and i paid for a new one.  are bad replacements common?  i thought for sure it would be the mobo, but the new one does exactly the same thing.  if the cpu was bad wouldn't it at least get some mobo bios beeps or something?

When you first plug the system into the wall the fans should spin up for a few seconds. It is possible that you got a bad motherboard. You problem does sound like a motherboard issue.

What happens when you pull all cards out, all ram sticks out disconnect power from all the drives. Not the powerbutton light, any diagnostic lights and if any beeps.

The processor can be a likely suspect too, although they rarley fail.  The best way to check that would be to put anonther one in the rig or try your current in another system. 

I am still leaning towards a bad replacement board.

Dell brands their replacement parts as Refurbished it has something to do with thier accounting methods.

Yes DOA motherboards are common.

The bios does interact with the procssor so one still cannot rule it out.

well, thats not cool.  i was really hoping for a definite answer.  thanks for all your help though.

I have a Dell XPS 700 and one day it wouldn't even boot into the bios.  I immediately thought it was the mobo.  Wrong!  After a few hours of searching the forums and finding nothing I did 2 things:

1.  Unplugged EVERYTHING from the computer.

2.  Then Plugged in ONLY the power cable, and 1 monitor, and the keyboard. 

When I booted up it worked!  I was amazed!  I found out that 1 USB port was bad and when I had it plugged in it was causing my system to not boot!  Yeah, crazy.  So try it if you haven't already.  It might work. 

As a good rule of thumb I shut down my cpu every night.  It saves on the power bill (1000 watt power supply + 3 monitors), and if something goes wrong the next morning I can remember what software I installed that might have caused it to crash.  Hope that helps. 

when you say unplug everything i assume you mean external peripherals only, right?  i'll give it a shot.

well that didn't work :emotion-6:

keep the ideas coming though.  i hope it is something stupid like that though.

well went and picked up a q6600 for next to nothing, threw it in and it fired right up.  thanks for all the help, and i hope this helps any out there with the same symptoms.

I have the exact same problem with my XPS 700.  Power up and the fans come on and stay on sometimes without the power button.  It never beeps so I'm pretty sure it is either the motherboard or processor.

I'll try your solutions, I hope it isn't the processor but that is likely it.

If its the processor, I'll probably just buy another one through the outlet...  This one has had too many little problems (bad memory, bad video card, power switch broken, etc).

Mine was the motherboard.  After a few trips into the bios settings (I think I reconnected a few drives into different connectors) I was back up like nothing happened.  Good luck.

Glenn

Same problem here.  I ran the Dell Tech Support Wizard: "No Power, No Post, No Video", no help. I disconnected everything from the board and I mean everything, memory, HDD, all cards and peripherals and still had the same result, Steady amber power button, no diagnostic lights, no POST beeps and the fan running continuously.

Should I R&R the MOBO or the CPU ?

Or take it out back to the gun range and throw some lead at it !

Given that processors rarely fail I would look for a new motherboard. be prepaired for sticker shock. and no you can only replace it with a Dell board

replaced with new processor and it worked until now.  i assume the heatsink is not capable of actually keeping it cool as its doing the same thing again. $200 down the drain again....

I have the same processor  and cooling as you do and my temps rarely get over 45 deg on all 4 cores and that is under heavy gaming. . so unless there is something wrong with your heatsink, it is more than adaquate to cool the processor.