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Won't Boot. No Video. No beeps codes?

Clint said:
A lot of Dell boards from this era suffered badly with cheap electrolytic capacitors especially around the CPU.
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+1

I have had a few older Dell's with failed electrolytics. Some of mine buldged and it was quite obvious that they had failed. One or two looked fine but when the capacitor was tested (off the board) it was <50% of its rated value.

Also if your replacing electrolytics on the motherboard use a low ESR type. Many of them (especially around the CPU) have this requirement and may not be stamped 'low ESR' on the can.
 
I was thinking this model was older than the bad cap days. Those were the pentium 4 and beyond. However the symptom was no video and no boot as you describe so maybe ...Dell gave extended warranty on the bad cap boards so replaced dozens of those mb's. Larry G

PS it was a huge recall. I think our tech team replaced about 300 motherboards.
 
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I recall that I had at least one P3 mobo that died from bad caps. It was a late one to suit a P3 800.
 
I'm back. Went out and bought a real multimeter and I have better readings now. All 5v connections are reading higher than 5v, 3.3v connections are reading 3.3v and the 12v is fluctuating between 11.89 and 11.9. That's good enough to boot cpu, right?

Swapped out the CPU as well and still no POST. Was graphics card ruled out as issue?

Also visual inspection looks good on the capacitors. Can I test them without actually removing them? I'm not comfortable enough with my soldering skills to solder something I don't absolutely have to.
 
I don't think your graphics card is the problem. Checking on Dell's site, all the old systems beep 5 or 6 times with video problem which includes no video card so your post check is not running. The only time it runs is without memory to tell you there is no memory. I have seen many times bad memory make a Dell dead in the water, that's my bet. Your motherboard may require memory pairs, so trying one stick at a time may not be conclusive. If the motherboard had bad caps, it would be obvious just looking at them. As far as bad power supply, Dell had a pretty good self diagnostic where the green power light would flash amber if bad or even borderline. If your power light stays green, good bet it is ok. That's my experience anyway, and I serviced hundreds of them for a large organization. Of course, motherboards are complex and can always have undiagnosed failure. Good luck.

Larry G
 
retrogear said:
I don't think your graphics card is the problem. Checking on Dell's site, all the old systems beep 5 or 6 times with video problem which includes no video card so your post check is not running. The only time it runs is without memory to tell you there is no memory. I have seen many times bad memory make a Dell dead in the water, that's my bet. Your motherboard may require memory pairs, so trying one stick at a time may not be conclusive. If the motherboard had bad caps, it would be obvious just looking at them. As far as bad power supply, Dell had a pretty good self diagnostic where the green power light would flash amber if bad or even borderline. If your power light stays green, good bet it is ok. That's my experience anyway, and I serviced hundreds of them for a large organization. Of course, motherboards are complex and can always have undiagnosed failure. Good luck.

Larry G
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I just got it to POST. Ripped the board out of the case and ran it sitting on top. Gonna try and figure out why.

edit:
Okay, I have no ****ing clue. I put everything back together one piece at a time and booted it after every change. The only guess I have is maybe it was shorting out against the case? It's got metal prongs in place of screw holes, but I didn't see anything suspicious.

Wasn't expecting that. Now I need a HDD.
 
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My bet is how far the slotted processor seats in the board. Is there a locking stand? Clean up the processor contacts. Forgot about those ...
 
retrogear said:
My bet is how far the slotted processor seats in the board. Is there a locking stand? Clean up the processor contacts. Forgot about those ...
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I am actually getting this strange error randomly during some bootups. "Unable to control a20 line".

When I googled it, it didn't appear to be a big deal. System doesn't appear unstable and I didn't see any nicks or corrosion anywhere on the motherboard either that could indicate a disruption of the system bus.

Also the CPU is actually pretty tight in there with all the original clips attached. I'll try blowing it out later after work.
 
What os are you booting DOS or maybe Win98? In either case look at the contents of your config.sys.
If booting DOS, might need device=himem.sys /M:1. If booting Windows, try removing that line, if present.
Also can go into bios and load setup defaults. That clears weird problems too. Also in bios, change boot mode from quiet to verbose or something like that.
Then you see all the strings on screen as they are processed and possible suppressed error messages given from the bios.

Larry G
 
retrogear said:
What os are you booting DOS or maybe Win98? In either case look at the contents of your config.sys.
If booting DOS, might need device=himem.sys /M:1. If booting Windows, try removing that line, if present.
Also can go into bios and load setup defaults. That clears weird problems too. Also in bios, change boot mode from quiet to verbose or something like that.
Then you see all the strings on screen as they are processed and possible suppressed error messages given from the bios.

Larry G
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This is actually the Windows 98SE Install Disc. To be honest, I don't think I'm getting that error after install is complete. And it was really only like a 1/3 chance each time during boot.

*I'm using this old 3gb regular hdd right now, so it was giving me some overheating and bad sector issues during formatting and I had to run it multiple times.
 
Didn't realize 98 had a blank autoexec.bat and config.sys. I made a boot disk and the error popped up again. Basically a non-issue?

Drivers were a PITA and I can't figure out a better delivery system than burning CDs atm, but other than that, got everything set up and it's great now.
 
comradesean said:
I am actually getting this strange error randomly during some bootups. "Unable to control a20 line".

When I googled it, it didn't appear to be a big deal. System doesn't appear unstable and I didn't see any nicks or corrosion anywhere on the motherboard either that could indicate a disruption of the system bus.

Also the CPU is actually pretty tight in there with all the original clips attached. I'll try blowing it out later after work.
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Usually the A20 line error is caused by an antivirus program like Norton etc. It can also be caused by bugs in the BIOS. Basically it is telling you that Himem.sys cannot control extended memory. This can cause problems with some older dos games (and Windows) which require XMS.

See if there are any newer BIOS's on the web. Reflashing it with a newer version might just fix it.
 
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