Dell Dimension 5000 not booting

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My old Dell tower PC seems to have gone to the great PC heaven. The start button just flashes on/off and it makes no attempt to start up.

I'm guessing I have a PSU failure which does not perturb me too much as I'm way overdue a replacement (PC) but I haven't backed up the hard drive for some months so even if I replace the PC I need to access the old HD data. I'm looking for ideas.

1. is my quick diagnosis correct - a flashing on/off button is a PSU problem or
2. is an HD failure?
3. is it possible/would it be easier to put the HD in another machine

Any pointers welcome.

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Thanks for the reply. There isn't a secondary switch on the PSU and I did a search last night for a PSU. They do come up on e-bay from time to time but none at the moment.

I talked to my IT colleagues at work this morning and their thoughts were it was more likely to be the motherboard. If so then that really does mean a new PC. In the meantime they suggested a HDD Caddy so that I can plug the old HD in to the USB port of a new machine. Really surprised that these are about a tenner on ebay so that's probably what I'll do.

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LordGrover said:

Depending on the vintage, Dell's have diagnostic lights which often indicate what's failed. The more modern desktops have a series of four LEDs numbered 1-4. Older models often at the rear with no numbering. They may be green or orange and solid, flashing or off, depending on the issue.
Mostly.

My IT colleagues pointed me to the diagnostics page on the Dell site which referred to the Dimension 5000 and the various patterns. When I got home tonight I went looking but I can't find any set of LED's on the front or back.

The on/off LED does a quick double flash and then a longer pause before repeating.

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jimmyjimjim said:

Before you get carried away with speccing out a new pc, have you unplugged the pwer lead and left it a few minutes before plugging it back in and powering up? I've have the exact symptoms you describe a couple of times now on different pcs, and this has sorted it.

Of course, if you've done this already to no avail, it's probably buggered.

Thanks - that was my first thought but I can say it hasn't worked!

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Popolou said:

Tried to help a colleague at work with a similar problem. We ended up deciding to bin the thing but remove the hard drive. In fact, we discovered that dell configured it as a raid 0 over two drives. Basically, the data is split across the two disks.

No way of recovering it. Have you actually seen a single drive inside?

Yes it's a single hard drive and I've taken it out

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Waspy1 said:

I had this problem on a Compaq, I found a solution on the Internet.

I really don't recommend this method unless you want to risk it as a last resort.

With the power to the computer ON, unplug the main plug (20 or 24 connectors)from the PSU to the motherboard, then plug it back in again.



It worked for me.

Just tried that and nothing doing! Thanks for all the comments and suggestions.

Now it's just a case of choosing myself a replacement PC - thnik I'll go laptop this time.