Resurrecting an old thread because it is similar to my issue.
First, I've been in the computer hardware and software development industry for 25+ years. I've done a lot... but I'm retired, old, my technical skills are rusty, and can't see very well any more. :banghead:
I've had an Inspiron 546 running pretty reliably since I purchased new about 5 years ago. I recently had a USB 2.0-based external drive die and decided to upgrade to a USB 3.0 device (nightly backups of all the computers in the house was taking 4-5 hours on 2.0... I figured I'd benefit from the 3.0 bandwidth). So, for the FIRST TIME EVER IN THE COMPUTER'S ENTIRE LIFE, I popped open the case, vacuumed out the dust, and plugged in a USB 3.0 card in the PCI-e x16 slot. I purchased the card new from Newegg, and it arrived today. It's an offshore card, but in my experience, this isn't a particularly complex device, so...
After plugging in the card, I buttoned everything up without any pre-test and plugged the machine back in. It wouldn't turn on... nothing. I pulled it back out, pulled out the new card, and tried to fire up the computer on the desk. Still dead. I unplugged the 20-pin from the motherboard and jumpered across green and black and plugged in the power supply. It spun up and spun up the 2 drives (hard drive and DVD). I then buzzed the front panel switch with a continuity meter and it's working. I then popped out all 4 sticks of RAM and all the accessory power connectors to see if I could get the motherboard to come on and fail POST. Nothing. I get that a power supply can go bad, and I get that the motherboard can as well... but the great mystery is that it happened EXACTLY after a trivial upgrade... and it's the only time ever in its life to have even been opened up, much less fail.
When I vacuumed, I wasn't heavy handed, and it wasn't plugged in... I just cleared out some dust. Perhaps the dust is what was holding everything together.
What I'm hoping is if anyone has some Dell-specific info on this, like a motherboard "reset" jumper (I used to work in the Dell Enterprise Systems Group in the early days... and our big boxes had reset buttons on the motherboards... unlabeled/undocumented). So, any advice? This is my primary computer, and it serves as sharepoint for all the other computers in the house... so this is devastating. I'm typing this on another machine that's cobbled together, and checking email via a webmail client into my offsite webserver since my POP client is sitting the harddrive of this dead machine.
:banghead::banghead::banghead:
I'm getting too old for this stuff.