Hi,
My name is Todd and I'm with Dell's online outreach program. The previous posters were correct, the four diagnostic lights on the back of the system are the quickest way to get an idea what is happening with the system. Those lights change from off to yellow, to green, as the system goes through it's power up cycle. Depending on what order the lights are colored it will give you an idea on what is causing the problem.
You can see the diagnostic error codes for your model in the online user's manual available for download from our support site,
http://support.Dell.com.
It's quite possibly the power supply but it could also be a bad expansion card (ie video card, sound card, etc) causing the problem. If you have any of those cards in the system you may want to try pulling them one at a time to see if any specific one is causing the problems. Please review the section about safely opening your system in the user's manual. The manual will explain the process for getting into the system and removing / adding parts.
Do you know if your system is still covered by a service contract? You can check that as well on our support site. There is a link in the top corner for Warranty Information and if you supply your service tag (found on a sticker attached to the system) it will give you the status of your contract.
Let me know if that helps. I'll stop back to see if there is anything else I can do for you.
Thank you,
Todd
Customer Advocate
Dell, Inc.
http://direct2dell.com/one2one/archi...1/19/3648.aspx
