Dell- Nothing but a flashing yellow

[RMadness66]

Greetings everyone, I have come to seek your assistance once again. My buddy has a Dell Dimension 4700, I believe, which is failing to power up. Whenever the power button is pressed, the power light simply flashes yellow continuously. I tried replugging in mostly everything. I took out my hard drive and hooked it up, but no luck there either. I've never had a power supply problem, but this sure seems to look like one. Please let me know what you guys think and how I can further diagnos and solve this problem. Thanks.

Madness

[Major Attitude]

Typically, from a Dell, a dead drive or fan, check the fans are all operating. Obviously this assumes the power supply is powering up as well.

[RMadness66]

Well, I did some more investigating. I also have a Dell. I took both my hard drive and my power supply and hooked em up to the other comp and still had no luck. The light on the motherboard turns on and one of the fan starts to spin but kicks off right away. I figure it's not a dead drive. Would a dead fan stop it from operating all together?

[RMadness66]

Any ideas?

[m1k3y]

If you are able to access the internet from another pc go to dell.com and do a search in the support area for the model of your pc. They usually have what it means with the problem you have.

[baklogic]

Try the same on your other computer, but eliminate the power supply first.

[studiot]

If the fans come on you have 12 volts
If the lights come on you have 5 volts
Substitution with a known good psu failing do better suggests that the problem lies elsewhere.

Memory or processor or both. Or a short in the PCI bus on a fitted card; this fault usually occurs with the modem after lightning.

Dell 4700. Does this model have Rambus (RIMM) modules? If so then they must be fitted in pairs and dummies fitted to empty sockets. You cannot test this type of memory by removing modules. Also they are prohibitively expensive to replace.


The ever cheerful Studio T

[RMadness66]

Well, I was able to locate the problem. I'd like to that everybody for the help. It looks like Major Attitude was right on... it was a dead fan. I can't figure out why Dell set it up this way, unless they were thinking fire hazard, but apparently it wouldn't kick on with the bad fan. I went to Dell's site first, and didn't find anything related to the fan in their support area, so thankfully I posted here. Thanks again
Madness

[baklogic]

Major Attitude teaches us all

My favourite quote
Sometimes the obvious eludes us.

[rmatthes]

Rmadness - I have the exact same problem but I suspect I am not as savvy as you. So there are two fans (I think) not sure which to replace. both? Any help surely appreciated.

[hrlow2]

to rmatthes.
Other person hasn't posted here in about 8 months.
Fans are relatively inexpensive now, so might want to replace both to be sure.
Just get the correct type of connectors on them.

[rmatthes]

Excellent point and thanks - yeah looks like 20 USD each so both is probably the best call. many thanks