Flashing curser at boot up

[BeckyBoo123]

Hi all.
I've been asked to fix a Dell Optiplex 330 (cringe) at work as it will not
boot up.
The user told be that it gone on to standby, and then it would not turn back
on.

Now I have looked at it I can see it power up with fan noise, and then the
Dell splash screen loads. Following this it comes up with a flashing curser
in the top left hand corner.
The USB mouse and keyboard seem to be unresponsive as I can't get in to BIOS.
I have tried several things, I have taken out RAM leaving one stick, reset
the BIOS, disconnected DVD drives and Hdd's.
So, I boot it up with nothing more than the mobo connected to the power and
it still does the same thing.
Could this be a power issue or a motherboard problem?

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

Hi all.
I've been asked to fix a Dell Optiplex 330 (cringe) at work as it will not
boot up.
The user told be that it gone on to standby, and then it would not turn
back
on.

Now I have looked at it I can see it power up with fan noise, and then the
Dell splash screen loads. Following this it comes up with a flashing
curser
in the top left hand corner.
The USB mouse and keyboard seem to be unresponsive as I can't get in to
BIOS.
I have tried several things, I have taken out RAM leaving one stick, reset
the BIOS, disconnected DVD drives and Hdd's.
So, I boot it up with nothing more than the mobo connected to the power
and
it still does the same thing.
Could this be a power issue or a motherboard problem?

Since you're not even getting close to starting Windows, this appears to be
a hardware problem. I recommend you repost it in a hardware newsgroup - this
is where the hardware experts hang out.

 

[Paul]

Hi all.
I've been asked to fix a Dell Optiplex 330 (cringe) at work as it will not
boot up.
The user told be that it gone on to standby, and then it would not turn back
on.

Now I have looked at it I can see it power up with fan noise, and then the
Dell splash screen loads. Following this it comes up with a flashing curser
in the top left hand corner.
The USB mouse and keyboard seem to be unresponsive as I can't get in to BIOS.
I have tried several things, I have taken out RAM leaving one stick, reset
the BIOS, disconnected DVD drives and Hdd's.
So, I boot it up with nothing more than the mobo connected to the power and
it still does the same thing.
Could this be a power issue or a motherboard problem?

Is there a USB card reader connected ? (The kind that reads Secure Digital SD
or other types of camera memory cards.) While checking the exterior of the
machine may seem sufficient, it is also possible for clever users, to connect
something to an internal header.

You can check the diagnostic LEDs, but my guess would be, the LEDs
have finished their sequence, by the time you see the blinking cursor.
Diagnostic LEDS are shown here.

http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/op330/en/ug/tools.htm#wp1093520

Other things you could try are -

1) Clear the CMOS. I don't see instructions in the manual for that.
Presumably, power off and unplug, remove the RTC jumper for ten
seconds, then replace it. The manual makes it look like it is a
two pin header, so removal is probably enough to reset the CMOS/RTC.
If you're not making any progress, power off and unplug, pop out
the CMOS battery for a while. Then reinsert. If a jumper won't
work, removing the battery will do it (because then there is no
power available inside the chassis at all).

2) Remove all RAM. Do one power cycle (listen for missing RAM beep).
Then power off again and install one stick of RAM. Some machines
recover after that sequence. I don't know of a theoretical reason
why that sequence makes any difference (I cannot see the BIOS
updating the DMI/ESCD when there is no RAM available), but sometimes
it works. (Actually, now that I think about it, that might be a
side effect of overclock failure detection that some motherboards
have. No reason for the Dell to have that.)

HTH,
Paul