I connect it to power it comes on long enough to show dell splash screen then powers down.

I have disconnected and reseated all components memory and hard drive and other cables including power supply cable. I've cleaned all dust out of machine. It still won't boot past Dell splash screen.

So does it get far enough you can enter BIOS? Or is it shutting down before it allows that? Or is it the Splash screen for the O/S? ( dell does tweak theirs)

It's the Dell Splash screen can't even get into the bios it wants to rapid power cycle.

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Originally Posted by smoothy

So does it get far enough you can enter BIOS? Or is it shutting down before it allows that? Or is it the Splash screen for the O/S? ( dell does tweak theirs)

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OK.. wanted to remove any doubt there. Any beeps? How old is it? If its more than a couple years old, perhaps the bios battery has failed? It can corrupt the bios settings enough to prevent a boot. I've seen that happen.

It's at least 5 years old. It beeps once.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by smoothy

OK.. wanted to remove any doubt there. Any beeps? How old is it? If its more than a couple years old, perhaps the bios battery has failed? It can corrupt the bios settings enough to prevent a boot. I've seen that happen.

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It might be toast...

THis is a hail Mary pass. Cost you a couple bucks but try the battery.

This link explains the beep stuff in detail.

Understanding Beep Codes on a Dell Desktop PC | Dell US

Tried a different battery and still the same results. I'm wondering if the power supply is crapping out on it.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by smoothy

It might be toast...

THis is a hail Mary pass. Cost you a couple bucks but try the battery.

This link explains the beep stuff in detail.

Understanding Beep Codes on a Dell Desktop PC | Dell US

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Well a single beep is the following but marginal voltage or current can cause bizarre symptoms

1

Motherboard: BIOS ROM Failure

Motherboard, covers BIOS corruption or ROM error

Try a different power supply. If that doesn't work you might need to cut your loses and put this bad boy to rest. Save the hard drive for any information you might require.

Yea, sounds like a motherboard failure. Agree with above, time to get a new one and get your data off the old hard drive.

If you got the machine from someone or somewhere else you might want to check the bios jumper was not left on clear bios pins. Also if someone tried putting a different power supply in it, it may not be compatible with a Dell machine. If the motherboard has both onboard video as well as a card, it may be defaulting to that instead of the card. If that were the case as soon as the drivers start to load (card), it would fail with nothing plugged into the onboard video connector. In that case switch to onboard to get to the bios and then set it to the card instead once inside and move back to the card after shutting down. You might consider pulling the CPU heatsink and use new thermal paste as well. That about covers all the things I would check. A failing or shot video card can do that too.