Dell Optiplex GX620

[Little-Miss]

Hi,

The new school i'm working at has a suite of Dell Optiplex GX620. 2 of them have the dreaded flashing Amber light.

Right, there's nothing....no POST boot or anything. Diagnostic lights are off.

Have tried unplugging everything, all the USB's, monitor and network cable.....Nothing....So, any suggestions?

Thanks..

[flyinghaggis]

Sounds like PSU or Motherboard fault unfortunately. First thing I'd try would be to plug in a PSU from another working GX620 and see if it boots with that. If not there's a good chance the motherboard's dead?

PS If they're GX620's you should have a 3 year onsite Dell warranty as standard so you could probably log a call with Dell and have an engineer onsite tomorrow to fix them?

[Little-Miss]

Yeah, i was thinking that. I'm new here so still trying to get my head around things.

My line manager reckons that they havent got warranty, but might check that myself.

[flyinghaggis]

AFAIK all GX620s come with a 3 year warranty as standard so I'd definitely give them a call on their support line and ask. Worst thing they can do is tell you it's out of warranty so you've nothing to lose!

[Domino]

you should be able to plug the service tag number into thewdell website to tell you wether they're under warranty or not

[iatkinson]

Had a 330 do this last week, rang dell, new PSU arrived next day and right as rain.

[StewartKnight]

does the g620 have usb's at the front? Is one of them broken?

[Sirbendy]

good call - check the USB is intact.

All of our 70 GX60s have expired with similar...it was a dodgy PSU batch. Dell don't like admitting it..

If I see any PSUs with the part number TH-0N2286, I flag them as lemons.

[Little-Miss]

Well, thaks for your suggestions everyone. I read about dodgy USB ports so checked them but nothing. I realised that as these are the small form machines the PSU was actaully outside the unit, swapped them..woo hoo! flashing amber light turns green.

I typed the service tag into the website and found they still have over a year of warranty.

So spent what felt like an hour on the phone and finally got them to send me two new external power supplies.

So thank you everyone for your suggestions.

Network manager before me walked out so i'm having to pick everything up.

[FragglePete]

Even if they are out of warranty, it's worth pushing the issue, especially if it's a known issue with a particular model.

Anybody remember the GX270's and their bulging capacitors on the motherboard which would lead to a 'thermal event' shutdown?

Previous place we had 15 of them, 9 failed in the first two years and mobo's were replaced. Eventually the rest failed after the three years and I kicked up a right stink with Dell and our account manager. They continued the motherboard replacement program well after the warranties expired and got all of the mobo's replaced out of warranty.

Now, I did work for the MoD back then which buys Dell's by the thousands, so they were keen to keep us happy, but it might be worth pushing it as Dell will want to keep you as a loyal customer especially if you purchase year in and year out.

Got me worried now, as I'm sure I have some of these GX629 where I am now.....

Pete

[Sirbendy]

Sounds like what we got. "PSU issue? Never heard of it mate".

The only one I got any sense out of was a departing tech who'd had enough.."We've got an internal memo here...bad caps in PSUs beginning TH-0N2286 are to be replaced FOC, no questions asked. Affects GX260s and GX60's amongst others.".

Every one I tore down - leaking caps in the top left corner of the PSU..photos and letters to Dell along with "We have 70, the new building will be Dell throughout UNLESS you continue to bugger about.."

Needless to say, 70 new CN series PSUs arrived in short order.

[button_ripple]

Check in the setup to see if the Chassis Intrusion has been set off. This happened here once. If you reset the chassis intrusion - it tells you how, it might start to work again. Somebody might have tried to open the cases.