Unsolved

4 Posts

2450

May 21st, 2020 11:00

Studio XPS 9100, cannot boot

I got a Dell Studio XPS 9100 in 2018, and never used it from there on. A friend sent it to me from the USA. This year, actually yesterday, I tried booting it and it gave me the missing RAM beeps and amber light flashing. I took it apart, and saw X6 4GB ram laying around the motherboard. I snapped it in until the RAM clips close themselves, making some pressure. I closed it and tried to boot it up. The monitor even showed me the Dell booting screen, and it turned off. I tried like 10 times, and, the same thing happened. Then I unplugged the PC from the power and waited arround 20 min, then i tried to boot the PC. When i pressed the power button, it tried turning on and, in less than 1 second, it turned off. Then, repeat when 3 seconds passed. Here are all my PC specs:

  • 24GB of RAM (wich is the max for that PC)
  • I do not know the OS because I never succesfully booted the PC(it could be Windows 7)
  • AMD Radeon 6180 1GB VRAM Graphics Card
  • Seagate Barracuda XT 2TB Hard Drive

10 Elder

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45.2K Posts

May 21st, 2020 12:00

Are you saying all six 4-GB RAM modules were out of their slots?

Do you know if these modules are all identical, not just in size (4-GB) but brand, and all the other RAM specs? You have to install identical modules as pairs in slots with matching color retention clips.  If you mix brands/specs in a pair, the PC probably won't boot.

But before you go any further, you probably should clear BIOS and replace the motherboard battery which may be dead:

  1. Power off, unplug
  2. Press/hold power button for ~15 sec
  3. Open case and remove motherboard battery (check Service Manual for details)
  4. Press/hold power button for ~30 sec
  5. Check that all cables to/from motherboard, RAM modules, PCI cards etc are correctly/securely attached
  6. Install a fresh CR2032 3-volt coin cell battery
  7. Close up and connect only mouse, monitor and keyboard
  8. Reboot

 

9 Legend

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47K Posts

May 21st, 2020 15:00

Flashing Amber power button indicates other problem.

It should turn on with 1 ram stick in the first white ear slot.

Disconnect hard drive, remove all ram except 1 stick.

Then turn on.  It should show an error on the monitor from the bios.

4 Posts

May 21st, 2020 19:00

Yes, they were out of their slots, just because of the shipping. The brand of the RAM modules is Samsung, and they were all identical.

9 Legend

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47K Posts

May 21st, 2020 22:00

 

 

Power status light: Indicates the power status.

Solid Amber – The computer is unable to boot to the operating system.
This indicates that the power supply or another device in the computer is failing.

Blinking Amber – The computer is unable to boot to the operating system.
This indicates that the power supply is normal but another device in the computer is failing or not installed properly.

 Light pattern Problem description

1 System board, BIOS corruption, or ROM error
3 System board, Chipset error, Clock failure, Gate A20 failure, Super I/O failure, or Keyboard controller failure
4 Memory or RAM failure
5 Coin-cell battery failure
6 GPU failure
7 CPU failure
8 Display failure
3,6 BIOS recovery image not found
3,7 BIOS recovery image found but invalid

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