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XPS 8500, motherboard replacement help
My family owns a Dell XPS 8500, a few months ago it started acting up. It wouldn’t boot, and then it wouldn’t stay running for more than 5-7minutes. We took it to our local office supply store and they told us that we had fried the motherboard. So we searched online for a replacement motherboard. Dell doesn’t make New motherboards for this unit, so the best we could do was a refurbished unit. It took more than six weeks to get it from China. We installed it. No problem with the installation. When we tried to boot it up, we got that amber light/standby mode. So again we went online, here in fact, we tried the unplug the unit and press and hold the power for fifteen seconds. We tried taking the battery out of the motherboard itself. We even tried to install the wrong the hard drive cable that came with the new board. Nothing has worked yet. Please help, as a college student I need the computer
fireberd
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February 6th, 2019 03:00
It sounds like the refurbished motherboard may be bad. That happens and getting it from China was a bad idea.
There are some listed on Amazon. I can't vouch for any of them other than I found them on Amazon doing a search.
https://www.amazon.com/xps-8500-motherboard/s?page=1&rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3Axps%208500%20motherboard
Joe586
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February 6th, 2019 07:00
Is there any way to tell for sure that my “replacement” board is bad?
to be fair we bought it from Newegg
fireberd
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February 6th, 2019 10:00
It should have a beep code too. If not, that points to motherboard. Are you sure you have both the 24 pin and 4 pin power conneections?
Whether it was received defective, or installing the CPU or whatever caused it.
RoHe
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February 6th, 2019 10:00
What color is the PSU indicator LED on rear of PC, right above the power socket, when PC fails with amber power button?
And you may want to read Dell's PSU troubleshooting guide.
Joe586
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February 6th, 2019 10:00
fireberd
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February 6th, 2019 10:00
There's several possibilities. Exactly how is the Amber light working? Solid Amber or Flashing.
Do you get any beep codes?
Assuming everything is installed correctly. Power cable(s), CPU, etc. Three possibilities. (1) Motherboard, (2) Power Supply (3) CPU.
If the CPU was not properly installed and bent some of the CPU socket pins, the motherboard is toast.
The other option is not to put any more $$ in an "older" system and just put towards a new one.
Joe586
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February 6th, 2019 11:00
On startup the computer beeps once, then it starts its usual whirling sounds. Instead of continuing through that progression it stops and the light on top turns amber
Joe586
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February 6th, 2019 11:00
Joe586
12 Posts
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February 6th, 2019 11:00
Joe586
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February 6th, 2019 11:00
fireberd
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February 6th, 2019 11:00
One beep, according to the Dell documentation "BIOS ROM Checksum in progress or failure"
I don't recall if you mentioned you reset the BIOS (cleared the CMOS Memory) but if not do that. With the power off, remove the CR2032 coin cell battery on the motherboard for at least 10 minutes. If no help, its back to a defective motherboard.
fireberd
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February 6th, 2019 12:00
I don't know if the 10 minutes is mandatory. That is what I've used for years. Actually Intel says 15 minutes. It can vary depending on the specific PC so 10 minutes or 15 minutes is a "safe" suggestion.
At this point do it for 10 minutes, can't hurt.
Jack
Joe586
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February 6th, 2019 13:00
We have a separate video card first of all.
The old mother board would actually boot up and run for about five minutes before it crashed.
With this new mother board, absolutely nothing boots. I got a green light on the back of the tower. And an amber light on the front. The cooling fans start and run. All three of them.
RoHe
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February 6th, 2019 13:00
Too many geeks stirring this pot? :Surprise:
You can remove the battery and press/hold power button for ~30 sec (with PC unplugged) to reset BIOS. If you just pulled battery out and put it right back, chances are BIOS didn't get cleared. So try clearing BIOS again.
The XPS 8500 was one of those models that beeped once when PC booted as part of the normal POST (power on-self test) process. But many peeps confused that single beep with the "BIOS ROM Checksum" beep code fireberd (Jack) mentioned. So in later versions of BIOS, Dell suppressed the normal single beep on POST.
If your system beeps once beeps once, etc... that's the BIOS Checksum error code. So if it's only one beep, one time, that could just mean this motherboard has an older version of BIOS.
But let's ask a few additional questions:
If you have an add-in video card, and clearing BIOS again doesn't help, remove the add-in card and clear BIOS again. Close up and connect mouse and keyboard to rear USB2 ports, and monitor to one of the onboard video ports (VGA or HDMI) depending on which your monitor supports and then reboot...
EDIT: Found it - the normal single beep at POST was suppressed in BIOS A06 and later versions on the XPS 8500.
Joe586
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February 6th, 2019 16:00