[SOLVED] Dell 7010 SFF will not complete POST ?

[jacksonbaker]

My Dell 7010 with E93839 MB was working fine. Now when I try to start it will not complete the POST and I cannot enter the BIOS via keystroke escape sequence. Everything seems to have power, HD spins up and does it's own self test, optical drive powers on, all fans run, keyboard lights (num lock, scroll lock, caps lock) all function normally. I've swapped RAM around, tried different video inputs (VGA, HDMI, DP) — no joy. Monitor says there's no video input. Is the BIOS dead? Need to replace the MB?

 

[SamirD]

Hmm...I would remove everything connected like any gpu, all drives and just leave a single memory module and see if you can get it to go into the bios and diagnostic. If not, pull the cmos battery to clear the cmos and try again. If not, try another memory module. If not, then I think a new mb or something went wrong with cpu.

 

[jacksonbaker]

Hmm...I would remove everything connected like any gpu, all drives and just leave a single memory module and see if you can get it to go into the bios and diagnostic. If not, pull the cmos battery to clear the cmos and try again. If not, try another memory module. If not, then I think a new mb or something went wrong with cpu.

I already tried that with the drives out, swapped ram sticks, reset all plugs. Haven't tried the CMOS battery yet. I'll do that. Seems that I should at least get a "no boot drive" error with the drives unplugged??

 

[SamirD]

I already tried that with the drives out, swapped ram sticks, reset all plugs. Haven't tried the CMOS battery yet. I'll do that. Seems that I should at least get a "no boot drive" error with the drives unplugged??

Even before that you should see the bios screen.

 

[jacksonbaker]

I removed the CMOS battery and the machine started without a hitch. Installed a new battery and again, started without a hitch. Could have been a dead battery?? When I run the pre-POST diagnostics there's a strange VRAM error -- "Memory Integrity test discrepancy" error code 2000-0332. Reading various posts over the years seems to indicate a need for BIOS update from A28 to A29. Whatever it is it doesn't seem to have any negative effect on operation. May just leave well enough alone.

 

[SamirD]

Sounds like it was the cmos battery. Glad you fixed it!

 

[jacksonbaker]

That VRAM error seems to have been generated by a generic driver. Selected the specific MOBO driver in CMOS and that error went away too. Didn't like Secure Boot either - at least at first. Made a couple of other adjustments and now seems to wok like new. Hooray!

 

[SamirD]

That VRAM error seems to have been generated by a generic driver. Selected the specific MOBO driver in CMOS and that error went away too. Didn't like Secure Boot either - at least at first. Made a couple of other adjustments and now seems to wok like new. Hooray!

For Dell systems, they do a really good job of having all the drivers on their web site and I'll typically download and unzip the drivers and then just update the driver from windows picking the place where the new drivers are for any drivers that are available. This will keep everything running right for sure.

Great to got everything working!