Unsolved
6 Posts
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551
May 8th, 2023 17:00
XPS 8940, will not boot
I bought two XPS 8940's in 2021 for my sons. Both of them we added graphics cards to so they can play games.
My one son told me the other day the computer will not boot and that occasionally for over a year it would not boot up or power on and he would have to jiggle the power cable. When you power it on it the fans would not even spin or anything would happen.
I can take his hard drive out and put it in my other sons computer and it boots fine - hard drive is good.
Swapped power supplies, memory, etc from the working pc to the broke one and nothing. Finally decided to order a refurbished motherboard from Dell as that was the only part I didn't swap from the working pc to the broke one.
Installed the new motherboard and at least the fans would spin but still not booting up. Now I am getting a amber/white light pattern that suggested the processor was bad. Ordered a new processor and nothing. Not booting up and getting a white, then 2 amber blinking light. Tried the whole process over again of swapping memory and power supplies from the working pc to the broke one and it still won't boot.
What am I missing? There is not much in terms of components and I even tried eliminating the MSI graphics card.
mrlrdr
6 Posts
0
May 9th, 2023 11:00
Thanks for the advice but after spending way too much time on it than I should have I ended up returning the replacement MOBO and the new processor and buying a new computer. This time I got the 4 year warranty . Its been a long time since I had a machine this fried, probably 20 years ago when we bought Gateway computers at my work. What led me to this decision was the dell tech saying that this machine is going EOL in the fall, even though its only a little over 2 years old.
JOcean
9 Legend
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12.6K Posts
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May 9th, 2023 08:00
Disconnect everything from the PSU except the MB and see if it boots. It is possible that the original CPU took out the replacement MB but not likely. Remember that it is never the CPU...until it is. Is it possible the MB you received does not have an updated BIOS and the CPU is not recognized? Also try removing the CMOS battery, leave it out for 15 minutes , then replace it with a new battery. It is possible on a refurb MB it was never replaced. You replaced and swapped known working components so you can pretty well rule those parts out as the culprits. It is also possible that the I/O assy. with the power switch is bad. Last of all carefully inspect the CPU and MB socket. Make sure none of the contacts or pins are damaged or bent.
Also try pulling all the RAM and try to boot up. You should get diagnostic lights indicating no RAM detected. Of course it is also possible that the MB you received is defective, not likely but don't rule out anything at this point. If you are able try the MB in the other working system to verify it's integrity.