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Oniigumo

Limp Gawd
Joined
Sep 25, 2007
Messages
291
Alrighty, so I figured I'd come on here and ask for some input on a computer prob I'm having. A Dell system my sister uses (XPS 8500, i7-3770, 8 gigs ram, GTX 760) never makes it past the Dell logo on boot (I'm assuming that's the post screen for Dells). There's a small loading bar, and it locks up about 1/10th the way through.

Things I've tried in order:

1. Took the thing outside and blew it free of any dust, reseated ram, cleared CMOS. Nothing changed.

2. Unplugged everything but the computer monitor, keyboard, and mouse. Nothing changed.

3. Unplugged everything but the computer monitor. This time it said "keyboard failure" (no shit), said press one of the F keys to continue, so I plugged the keyboard in but it doesn't respond.

4. Tried single sticks of ram in different slots. No change. Thought I'd add, when pulling all the ram, it throws the expected beep code errors.

5. Tried booting with the HDDs and the dvd drive disconnected. No change.

6. Swapped out the video card with a known working card, there is no onboard or I'd try removing it and using onboard. No change. *Just tried with nothing in it, to see if I could hear windows boot after plugging speakers back in, nothing happened after a few minutes of waiting (usually takes less than a minute to boot)


So I'm pretty much thinking that narrows it down to either the mobo or cpu, but before I go out and look for what I'm guessing is a BTX mobo, I wanted opinions here as well.
 
Could be the CMOS battery.

If that isn't it, then I would try reseating the CPU as well.
 
cyclone3d said:
Could be the CMOS battery.

If that isn't it, then I would try reseating the CPU as well.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I'm planning on reseating the CPU later on tonight, but the system hasn't moved pretty much since I set it up for her, so I didn't think that'd be an issue. CMOS battery, I'll go drop a few bucks on one just in case, would be awesome if it was that simple lol.

DrLobotomy said:
Dying power supply or dying motherboard it sounds like.
Click to expand...

It might be the psu, but It's not the OEM supply in there. I upgraded it as soon as I tossed the 760 in there. I want to say it's a 500w PCP&C Silencer MKIII, but it might be the 600. All I know is it was straight up overkill considering it's all running stock clocks, 2 HDDs, 1 disc drive. That's pretty much the only reason I didn't consider it a fail point, didn't think it could go THAT quickly. Still think it could be the PSU, having heard those extra details?

Either way, I appreciate the insight from you guys so far, so thanks again. I'll update this evening after reseating the cpu.

EDIT: Also thought I'd add, if it turns out to be the mobo, I'll most likely just buy a new case so that I can use a standard ATX mobo instead. Less hassle down the road. I'm guessing I wont be able to use the same windows key either way, OEM licenses are tied to the mobo/bios right? So I'll likely end up hitting up one of our [H] members in FS/FT for a key.
 
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Yea, OEM tied to mobo. Time to build a real pc so you can just swap the parts you need and no nastee OEM cases/psu's.
 
Yeah it's shitty what OEMs do. It was a great deal for it all, was like ~450-500, so after the PSU and GPU it was ~750-800 all said and done. That said, when I upgraded and handed it down to her, I decided to go back to building them, and what we're dealing with right now is exactly why I prefer to build hahaha.
 
Sounds like a mobo problem. You can try to get a mATX mobo in there and see if that fixes things (from looking at pics online, a mATX mobo should fit).
 
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