Yellow power light on a dell?

[mogulman911]

Hey guys,

I'm new here but have a pretty big problem. I work at my High School's TV studio and we are running several expensive editor computers, four HP's and one main, broadcasting computer that is a Dell workstation. Usually, we have one or two external hard drives hooked up to it that are often removed (legitimately) from the computer to be used on others. Today, one of the other kids who works there was just about to attach one via firewire, and the entire system shut down, would not turn back on, and the power light lit up yellow. We called Dell and of course they gave us the diagnosis, "power failure, hardware failure..." My question is, have any of you had this problem? Did we blow a fuse? Static electricity (everything is on a carpeted floor)? Right now we have one dead main editor and a dead external hard drive

Any help is greatly appreciated!

 

[oscaryu1]

I'm guessing the power supply went. Dell uses the crappiest power supplies around, which is why you go custom...

Try another PSU. Dell's PSU are BTX/Prop. something, thus standard ATX PSU's will not suffice.

 

[windowsvista]

yes the power supply and i would check the fuse.
Get a new dell?

 

[windowsvista]

what is the model example: dell inpirion 1000

 

[massahwahl]

Did you try removing any connected peripherals and trying to turn it back on? It seems if a yellow light indicated a blown PSU dell would have known that right away.

 

[oscaryu1]

what is the model example: dell inpirion 1000

We don't need the model. We need to find out what's wrong with his/her PC...

If you have a PSU tester... a free PSU, ect...

 

[massahwahl]

We don't need the model. We need to find out what's wrong with his/her PC...

If you have a PSU tester... a free PSU, ect...

lol, If you have read some of his other posts, I dont think 'windowsvista' has any clue at all sometimes

 

[mogulman911]

hey sorry I can't give a model, as I'm not there right now. And yes, trust me we would go custom if we could, but there is a HUGE hassle in that the school has to approve all systems otherwise we don't have insurance and whatnot etc. I feel comfortable swapping it out, they'll never know anyways . But i guess that's the consensus? Oh and all peripherals were taken out and it wouldn't boot. So blown PSU?

 

[oscaryu1]

We aren't sure yet. Might be a blown motherboard, capacitor, ect.

Take another PSU from one of the other systems and plug it into that one. Start it. If it doesn't boot, not the PSU. (Remember, still disconnect everything like optical and HDD only. )

 

[NMaz]

but if it is a blown psu why would the hard drive fail too?

 

[Iluvpenguins]

but if it is a blown psu why would the hard drive fail too?

If the HDD can't get enough power...it can get corrupt. Happend to me a while back, my graphic card was using too much power and the psu couldn't handle it..so my hard drive became corrupt because of that and I had to do a fresh install...lost everything .

 

[NMaz]

If the HDD can't get enough power...it can get corrupt. Happend to me a while back, my graphic card was using too much power and the psu couldn't handle it..so my hard drive became corrupt because of that and I had to do a fresh install...lost everything .

Yeah I've had that problem before, but now the hard drive won't even turn on when plugged into another computer or outlet.