PSU OR MOTHERBOARD PROBLEM? PWR BUTTON FLASHES AMBER

Hanto,

Thanks for responding. The system is a Dell XPS 410/Dimension 9200. I did some more online research and attempted one last effort to isolate the problem before buying a Dell extended warranty. After disconnecting all the drives and PCI and other cards, I added back the cards one at a time. Each time I would turn on the machine and then turn it off, unplug it, and depower the MOBO before plugging in the next card and re-powering. I was very pleased to see the first time I powered up with the first PCI card, I got a green light on the power button. By this time I was pretty sure I knew what the problem was, one of my video cards. Earlier I found that the fan was prevented from turning by the other video card above it. I believe it caused the lower video card to overheat. When it overheated it may have caused a small piece of wire retension plastic to expand and also obstruct the fan from turning. I plugged this culprit in last and low and behold the computer got the dreaded flashing amber light.

It looks as though the PSU and MOBO are fine and I'll simply have to find another video card if I want my other 2 monitors working. I am not a computer person, but it looks like I was also able to get the system setup to find the right hard drive for boot up. I guess when I disconnected the hard drive it needed me to manually select the drive.

Thanks for responding. If you have any other suggestions or comments, feel free.

You have left out a whole lot of pertinent information, such as which of Dell you are talking about, however since power supplies are ' usually ' fairly easy to eliminate as the problem especially by a fully equipped computer store who could if they wanted try another power supply on the mother for troubleshooting purposes but not have due to the possibility and fear that the motherboard would a deleterious effect on an otherwise good troubleshooting power supply. Voltage measurements can be taken during operation to test voltage levels and most any technician can do that if they have voltmeters and most any decent technician does. It is very possible that some component on the motherboard has gone bad, often a capacitor that will load down the power supply. I'm having to assume that you are talking about a desktop computer. Assumptions get a man into a lot of trouble, so until you can give better and more thorough information, I would have to conclude that the technician knows much more then I do.