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August 29th, 2006 13:00

Optiplex GX620 Flashing Yellow Power Light and a Dead Computer

I have a GX620 purchased in April '06 that seems to have died. On the front panel, the power light flashes yellow and the computer doesn't power up when the power button is pressed. The computer has power going to it. All the connections from the power supply to the motherboard seem snugly connected and correct. The amber light on the motherboard is lit and steady and the ethernet connection light has one light steady orange and the other light flashing yellow. Nothing is lit next to the front panel headphone jack. The computer was generally left on all the time, but was connected to a good quality surge suppressor. The network connection was surge suppressed at the corporate network closet.
 
Any ideas on how to determine what happened and how to fix this?

8 Wizard

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47K Posts

August 29th, 2006 16:00

Disconnect the data and power cable from the hard drive. Does it come on then?

3 Posts

September 1st, 2006 00:00

I had a similar problem.  It turned out that the wired usb mouse had been cut.  Once that usb cable was removed, it booted up just fine.  It might be worth unplugging non-essential usb devices and see if that corrects it.  Also, try new mouse and keyboard if you have one around you could test with.
 

2 Posts

September 1st, 2006 14:00

We finally isolated the problem. It turns out that the hard drive was bad, most likely an overpower fault of some sort and the "smart" power supply refused to allow any part of the system to start up.
 
This does bring to light a weakness of the Dell GX 620. When the dadburned thing doesn't start up, you have absolutely no idea of what's going wrong. Dell support suggested the power supply. Then suggested the motherboard. Then suggested the processor and/or memory. Then suggested that we had been shipped bad parts. If it wasn't for the fortunate happenstance of us moving the hard drive to another system and having it fail, it could have taken us weeks for this to be diagnosed.
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