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What color is the power button and is it steady or blinking?

If you're comfortable working inside the case (read the manual for details), you can try this:

1. Power off and unplug
2. Press/hold power button for ~15 sec
3. Open case and remove motherboard battery
4. Use canned air to blow out all the dust bunnies
5. Carefully reseat RAM modules and PCI cards in thier slots
6. Check cables between drives and motherboard, etc.
7. Reinstall battery (right-side-up!) and close the case.  (NOTE: if battery more than ~2-3 years old, it might be time for a fresh one. CR2032 3-volt lithium ion battery, ~$2-$3 at discount stores.
8. See if it boots now with only mouse, monitor and keyboard connected.

 

Ron, The power light burns steady no flickering. I removed all components that I could from the mother board including the battery. I cleaned everything really good removed all dust and reinstalled everything. I turned the unit on and all I get now is a black screen it will not boot at all .I opened it back up and removed and reinstalled everything a second time just to be sure I didn't have something loose. Still get the same black screen and no booting.

What color is the steady power button?

 

 

The button on the front of the computer is blue.The light on the rear is green.

Can you test this monitor on a different PC or test a different monitor on this PC?

Make sure the cable from the monitor to the PC is seated correctly at both ends. Turn PC and monitor off when you disconnect/reconnect the cable

BTW: How is the monitor connected? To an add-in video card (eg, AMD or NVidia) or to an onboard (Intel) video port? .

I have already tried a different monitor and it does the same thing. I also hooked the old monitor to another computer and it works fine. The monitor is connected through a factory onboard video port.

So you see nothing on the monitor when you boot? Any beeps when you boot?

Can you boot from a bootable CD or DVD and see what happens? The Dell Windows Reinstallation CD and Dell Drivers CD should be bootable.

If booting from CD doesn't help, power off and unplug

1. press/hold power button for ~15 sec.
2. Open case and disconnect everything except boot hard drive
3. Remove all RAM modules, except the one in slot 1
4. Remove all PCI cards
5. Remove motherboard battery and press/hold power button for ~30 sec
6. Reinstall battery
7. Reboot with only mouse, monitor and keyboard connected

If that doesn't help, repeat #1-3, and swap one of the other RAM modules into slot 1 and repeat #5-7. If still no video signal, then you may have a motherboard failure. If the system is under warranty, contact Dell asap for repairs.

If not under warranty, can you borrow a PCI-e x16 video card and test it in this system? Be sure to power off, etc before installing the video card, and move the monitor cable to a port on the card before you reboot. Obviously, the card you test will have to have output (DVI or VGA) that matches what your monitor can accept.

If the add-in card works but onboard video doesn't, you have a less expensive work-around than buying a new motherboard or new PC.