Dell PC wont boot up

[JediMaster]

My friend just phoned as I have a Dell PC also, he turned his PC on today & the fan was going crazzy & speeding up. He went to work & tried the PC again now &it wont turn on (boot up) but fan is going.

Monitor LED is Orange & turns Green when PC is turned on, but that is not happening now either.

Is it the FAN thats broken/faulty? He has cleaned it with a soft brush & air.

[MovedGoalPosts]

If the fan is spinning then it's not that.

Any beeps from it?

first thing is to check the state of the fan if its totally clogged up it may be overheating immediately although I would imagine its not that

PSU fault or Mobo is 99 times out of 100 causes of this but a strip down and reseat of everything and a reset of cmos is always a good process to follow

noticed he has already cleaned it so onto secnd half of my post lol

[Kymmy]

If the fan is speeding up and slowing down it sounds as though the hardwired POST test is resetting the machine. Normally indicitive of a hardware fault. Strip the PC down to it's bare essentials needed for completing the POST (PSU, M/B, CPU/FAN, MEM, VID) If still no luck then if you do have a speaker try reducing it even more (remove the VID and MEM) and see where the POST error beeps lead you. If you get beeps indicating MEM error then add the MEM and see if you get the next beeps in line. Without a POST indicator card (or built in LEDS) it's the ONLY way of diagnosing boot errors pre-bios screen without using spare hardware. When you eventually add the bit of hardware that duplicates the fault you've found the problem.

One thing to check if you have a meter is also the voltage rails (or swap out another spare if you have one

[haydnwalker]

Do you know what model dell it was.

There was some motherboard recalls a while ago because of this issue and we've had lots of GX270s and GX280s with this issue. Unfortunately they are no longer replacing the motherboards so your friend would have to purchase one. If his machine is still under warranty they should sort it for him though.

Get your mate to check the capacitors on the motherboard (they look like big barrells [normally blue in colour]) If they have raised tops (look a bit like domes) then its DEFINITELY the motherboard