So our ~10 old dell pc just stopped working the other day. The dreaded Dell Amber light. There's really 2 possibilities. Motherboard shot, or power supply shot. Well I replaced the PS about 5 years ago. Those are cheap. Under $40. So I got a new one today. I installed it, and the same yellow light. I guess it's motherboard time. Hopefully that isn't too much. Any thoughts on this Grizzly Adam ? Anyone else? I will try a new cr2032 watch battery before I take anything else apart. I'm a hack at this stuff, but I've successfully fixed and even built my own entire PC's. It's really just screwing and connecting stuff together.
Regretfully, I've not much advice, but if you're looking at replacing the motherboard, perhaps a new processor and RAM is in order. $.02
I've never had to replace a motherboard battery so while it couldn't hurt to replace it, don't think that is the issue. No experience with working on dell's though so no idea what the led could mean, all mine are built by me. Does it try to boot at all? loop boot? any beeps? usually a bad board will even try to boot. Maybe the ram needs to be reset, I've seen that before but it should try to boot loop or beep like crazy. Could just be a bad hard drive to but you should see something on the monitor, such as the dell logo or some sort of post information..
See, this is just a home PC. If I do much more than replace the existing MB with a same one, it may give me bigger issue and brick. I just want to keep all the stuff in the hard drive(s) as there's a lot of pictures and such. I don't think that will be a problem, but I also don't want to do anything to it, aside from getting it back up and running. Dell does weird proprietary things. The PS is a standard PC one, but the board is not a standard ATX. I found aa new MB, certified by Dell, for $20. A new cr2032 battery is said to have fixed these problems in the past.
I've had lo/dead batteries cause a no start. I've clip-leaded a AA battery in too. Battery might not power BIOS settings memory any more but there's still a clock/date.
I don't know why the battery would cause a no start, worst case situation is you're resetting date and time and other bios settings each time it boots. otherwise it defaults. chitty boards?
I've never had to replace a bad battery on a board.....desktop or laptop. I've had caps go bad on one board. Only one. Wife's 3 year old laptop has a bad memory slot (process of elimination). At 10 yrs., it doesn't really owe any more service, and newer stuff is much faster and responsive. Easy enough to transfer all your pics to a new drive. You can even clone the drive to a new one (get an SSD). If you have the time, build a new one. I had all the parts for a low end machine (no gaming for me) in my Amazon cart last year (about $350-400), but went a different route. If you do that, install Linux Mint.
It's more than likely the ram. If you have more than one stick in there, try pulling them one at a time, swapping slots, etc. Also, is the amber light blinking or the speaker beeping? Most computers send codes when in distress.
Amber light is solid, no beeping. That says it's on standby per Dell. I'll try pulling one ram stick., Then try again, and swap, try again, etc
Here's a dumb question.. Is the monitor working? Is it still connected to the video port? I'm guessing onboard video being a dell but maybe there is a card in there too? Try cycling the monitor and see if it displays anything, there might be a test button on it as well. If I recall correctly, when you disconnect the video cable it should give a test pattern on it or a message saying no connection. I've had bad caps as well on boards, they usually will try and boot still. They tend to let you know ahead of time, as they don't fail at once. Usually you'll see those symptoms trying to boot, the boot loop or not booting completely and or seeing a bios screen if you have that enabled. The screen may show the entire post or only show part of it depending on when it freezes. my pc is 10 years old at least and it has had a good run. I will probably update it in the next yearish, it still runs video games ok (kept the video card somewhat current) and does well for my audio processing.
I tried all the suggestions and it appears the Mobo is pootered. I'll be ordering the $20 Dell refurbished exact Mobo tonight. It's worth a shot. The computer does have it's own separate video card. I made sure of that before I bought it, but that was a long time ago. I think the desktop models had the built in video card, but the tower like I have is a separate card.
Yep, I figured for $19.89 shipped it's worth a try. With tax season around the corner, I got my confirmation that the Mobo will be here by the 24th. Just waiting on my former employer's w2, then I can get on that.
Ok, after the motherboard went all over Wisconsin due to some usps issue, it arrived on Thursday. I swapped the motherboard over today, and same thing. Grrrr. I'll try to swap the power supplys over and see if that does it. If not. I might be building a PC. I've already got a power supply.
Did you get a new processor and fan with the motherboard? If so, I still think RAM. If the fan doesn't run it won't boot, safety function. So thats something to look at.
Also, where is the yellow light you are seeing-- on the monitor or the tower? Is the CPU fan spinning.
