XPS 8500, won't boot

Question

I have an XPS 8500 with Intel i7 processor bought in 2012, and of course way out of service warranty.

The system will no longer boot up. It has been running reasonably well for years with various upgrades - HDD converted to SSD, RAM upgraded to 32GB. No current changes to the system which could contribute to any issues.

The normal boot sequence is configured to boot from CD first if a bootable media is there. There is no longer any discernable sequence. All that come up is the Dell logo accompanied by a progress bar that is permanently set at zero and never moves, with a text at the upper right-hand corner of the screen that says "F12 Boot Options". Pressing F12 does nothing - no discernable response. There is no other keyboard response other than to ctrl-alt-del, which has the usual effect of shutting it down. These responses are the same whether or not there is bootable media in the CD drive. There is no way to get to the 'BIOS' configuration screen. The green LED on the back of the power supply is on constantly while the system is plugged in. The yellow LED on the mother board is on constantly also, while the system is plugged in. The yellow LED on the mother board does not turn off or blink at any point.

I have removed the coin cell battery, waited for 20 minutes, reinserted it, and rebooted by holding the power button down for 20 seconds or so. I have unplugged the system, again waited for 20 minutes or so and restarted. The response is exactly the same in both cases to what is described above.

This indicates to me major motherboard failure.

My questions are two.

1. Is there any hope; can the system be repaired?

2. If not, what are my options to get back to a similar state of functionality for my desktop computer?

Thank you in advance for any advice.

RoHe · Accepted Answer

To add to what @JOcean already said, your procedure to clear BIOS isn't right...

You should remove the old battery and press/hold power button on PC for ~30 sec, without any battery installed, and with PC's power cord unplugged from rear of the tower.

Then install a fresh battery, plug in mouse, monitor, keyboard, PC power cord, and see if it boots now.

BTW: What color is power button on PC when it won't boot? Is it steady or blinking? If blinking, count the blinks which are an error code.

JOcean · Answer

For a 10 year old system I would not use the old CMOS battery. Replace it with a newly purchased battery. And yes leave a battery out of the system for at least 15 minutes before installing the new battery.

redxps630 · Answer

JOCean is correct.  replace cmos battery with a brand new CR2032. also try clear cmos settings by reset RTCRST jumper on motherboard.

dabird · Answer

Joy! This worked. I'll mark this as the solution. Thank you.

Re question about the status of the power button. As I recall, there was no blinking.

This whole episode brings up another directly related issue though. I had thought that a thorough off-line backup was sufficient to restore a catastrophic system death. Now, I'm not so sure. With a replacement system, simply restoring a disc image isn't going to cut it because the OS will have different parameters and may not boot with an image from a different model/maker. Any advice? What do sys admins do for these cases? (If I should move this to a different thread, please direct me.)

Tesla1856 · Answer

@dabird wrote:

1. Joy! This worked.

2. I had thought that a thorough off-line backup was sufficient to restore a catastrophic system death.

3. With a replacement system, simply restoring a disc image isn't going to cut it because the OS will have different parameters and may not boot with an image from a different model/maker. Any advice?

1. Excellent (good work).

2. It (Macrium Reflect) IS sufficient ... for all the years you own that system.

3. When you finally get a new computer (after 5-10 years) you just go ahead and rebuild the software from scratch. Often, it has the next Windows version anyway.

Programs and Apps you clean-install. You don't have to restore the whole Macrium Reflect image. You can "peak in" and just restore your data-files to new system.

Then, you go back to local backups with Macrium Reflect on this new hardware.

RoHe · Answer

Glad you got it working again!

You are correct. Chances aren't good the image from an old PC will work properly with the hardware in a brand new PC. But, that image will work if you have to replace or upgrade the boot drive in the same PC.

And, at least with some imaging software (eg, Macrium Reflect - free), you can "mount" the image from an old PC that's saved on external media as a drive in a new PC and copy all your personal files from that image onto a drive in the new PC. You still have to install all your software on the new PC.

Just keep in mind that an image is only up-to-date on the day you created it. So get in habit of imaging the drive or at least backing up personal files on a regular basis.

dabird · Answer

Thanks for the replies.

Yes, I already use Acronis and do a backup every day. I've also used it when I converted to all SSDs.

It was then that I also noticed that the partition structure is complicated with more even than the typical restore partition. I wonder how much of the ability to restore to only the current PC is due to whatever 'magic' is going on with the extra partitions.

RoHe · Answer

@dabird It's more complicated than just what partitions on the drive which was imaged.

When Windows is installed, it configures itself for the specific CPU, chipset, video, audio etc etc that are installed. If you move that image to a PC with different hardware, Windows isn't likely going to boot.

And even if it does boot, it may not work optimally because the new hardware will have more capabilities than your XPS 8500.

You also may have to address issues related to storage capacity of the new boot drive. If the image is of a drive that's smaller than the boot drive in the new PC, you'll have to resize the C: partition on the larger boot drive, or all the extra storage capacity goes to waste.

Etc...

dabird · Answer

Understand now. But, maybe this boils down to a driver problem?

Also, I'm noticing that the Macrium ReDeploy claims to be able to restore to dissimilar hardware, and the process looks like it can include the appropriate drivers. Is that process not reliable?

RoHe · Answer

No idea what Macrium ReDeploy can/can't do...never used it...

XPS Desktops

XPS 8500, won't boot

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