[ItsAlwaysSunny]

Hello,

I am in the process of selling my Alienware Aurora and the buyer had asked me for pictures of the inside of it. In the year and a half that I have owned it I had never bothered to open the case... It had always ran fine, and I regularly cleaned the outside of it. Anyways, I opened it up and sprayed (from a distance) some compressed air in it. Mostly just trying to clean off the dust that was on the fan and the back vent area. I also wiped off the dust that was sitting on top of the video card.

I then plugged the computer in and started it to take a picture with the lights on. Since the monitor wasn't plugged in and I didn't really think much of it I just shut it off via the power button. Later on I hooked the monitor and everything back up and received an error message when I went to boot it up. Quite stupidly, I again shut down the computer (w/o writing down the error message) and attempted to restart it. This time I received the "operating system not found" message. I made about two or three more attempts at restarting it before going to bed, same message each time.

Since I'm selling it, and I keep everything on my laptop anyways I just figured I could re-install windows and be on my way. Well, the next day when I went to turn it on the monitor just stayed black, no "operating system not found" nothing. The computer lights up, the fan starts running and nothing happens on the monitor. (I've attached the monitor to my laptop and it works fine)

I've contacted dell (it is still under warranty) and spent several hours on the phone with them while removing the hard drives, the video card and ram after which they sent a technician out to my house with new parts. (motherboard, video card, ram, and some other stuff I didn't recognize) again nothing. After about three hours he called in, and again the tech support told him to remove various pieces and tell them the number of beeps... the conclusion was, me being referred back to my case manager who is going to call me on Monday... hopefully

According to the technician you cannot send in desktops to be fixed (not sure if that is true or not) instead they send someone like himself out with parts and that's that... except, after him spending nearly three and a half hours doing so, it still doesn't work.

If anyone has any advice as to what the problem is or what I may suggest next time I speak to their tech support it would be much appreciated.

Thanks

 

[dai]

can you see the hard drive listed in the bios ok

run dell diagnostics

 

[ItsAlwaysSunny]

I can't access the bios, when I start the computer there is no activity on the monitor at all. It won't even come out of power save mode now like it use to, I have to manually press the power button on the monitor which I never did before. And it just remains black. There is no response when I press and hold or repeatedly push F12 after start up. I tried F2 and F10 as well and no response, just a black screen...

 

[Stancestans]

Lets confirm that there actually is no video output. I assume your motherboard has onboard graphics? If so, connect the monitor to the onboard video graphics port and not the video card.

 

[dai]

what are you running
video card brand and model
cpu
m/board
ram
power supply
brand
model
wattage

what do the fans do

do you hear bios error beeps when you try to start

 

[Stancestans]

Of all things swapped, the psu could be failing. Did the techie try out a different psu? My reason for suspecting the psu is the sequence of events. At first, it said 'operating system not found' probably because the boot hdd wasn't getting power and therefore not being detected/accessed. Afterwards, even after swapping components, the system doesn't even power up properly (not even bios loads). The fans could be turning alright, but the processor might not be firing up. U might wanna check the psu connectors for the cpu and hard disk (boot hdd). Your cpu is powered by a 4-hole connector, right? If so, most psu have a spare connector, but it's useless if the psu is faulty.