Hi everyone-

I have been having a boot problem with my 4550 for a while now.  Upon power up, the drives flash on and off, and the computer acts as if it is powering on and off at a rate of about once per second.  I called Dell tech support and after 3 hours, the guy basically gave up and said he'd call back within an hour once he figured out the problem.  Of course he never did.  Not wanting to spend another 3 hours on the phone, I tried email support.  What a joke.  The first guy that responded started out on the right track, but stopped responding as soon as the going got difficult.   I received another email from someone new who asked me to start all over.  So I start over.  And again, the guy just stops responding after a few messages.  It was clear that no one was reading my messages very carefully, because they would ask me questions that were already stated in the original email.  It was also clear that there is no service record for my computer, since they all ask the same questions again and again (ie are you sure the monitor is plugged in....wow great work on that question) .

So basically, I have two questions:

A:  is there anyway I can just get a refund/ credit for this piece of junk.  I have had it for 6 months and it has been in an un-usable state for 4 out of those 6 (it had serious OS problems out of the box!  freezing and everything else!).  Anyone had experience with that?  I mean if I tech support cannot fix it....

B.  Would anyone recommend taking it to a local CPU shop to get a diagnostic?  I doubt there is anyway to recoup the $$ spent on the test, but I seriously don't have the time to deal with it.

Finally, I can give a description of the problem, and if anyone out there can help, that would be awesome. 

I have a 4550 Dimension with XP, DVD, CDR, 128 DDR memory, some budget ATI video card, modem, pretty standard stuff. 

The computer will not boot - in fact it does not even get far enough to hear the 'POST' beep.  I think it sounds like the power supply is cutting in and out because all my drives click on and off, and I can see their LED's click on and off.  But the fan runs smoothly and the front power LED is on.  whatever it is, the computer does not get far enough into booting to see a video feed, or read the floppy A for boot. 

Tech support had me read off the diagnostic LED's as I unplugged every single drive and card.  Every time (all drives, no drives and in between), the lights read:

A:  amber/green flashing  B. amber C. green D. green.  

Which supposedly suggests a memory problem.  (IS THERE ANYWHERE TO FIND THESE CODES MYSELF ONLINE???!)

However, I bought new memory at CompUSA and that did not clear up the problem.  So now I am left wondering what to do and whether this computer will ever work.... 

If you get this far, thanks for your help!