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Lights 1, 2, then 1, 3, 4, Dell XPS 420

Tags:
  • Dell Studio Xps
  • Diagnostic
  • error
  • Systems
  • Light
Last response: in Systems
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June 24, 2014 5:02:20 AM

I have a problem, I'm on my wife's pink laptop cause my desktop (Dell XPS 420) just took a big dump on my desk and quit on me (but it didn't go smoking on me, hint hint, lol)... according to the websites I searched, the problem (which was light 1 and 2 indicating "A possible expansion card failure has occurred.") evolved into a light 1, 3 and 4 which is not listed and can be either the GPU, PSU or a worse case motherboard...
(on Dell's site it said remove and test the RAM cards by inserting them and running the system again, did that, not the issue, then the GPU, didn't fix the issue)
nother site, said they replaced one, two or all 3 parts I listed, to fix the issue...

I need to know if you all think it's most likely the GPU (which is an AMD HD 3400 series) and not the PSU or Motherboard...

Issue why I think it's the GPU, I recently overclocked it from it's stock (I think it was set to 600MHz) to 800MHz using the AMD CCC, but I tested it extensively and it never exceeded 56 deg c... I have red that the PSU is too weak (or rather, not a good quality) and I have heard that the Motherboard could be the issue... I also read now that I think of it, that the Processor might be the issue but the likely-hood of that is almost nil...

I also recently got the pc from my parents who basically thrashed the OS (Vista x64) and I couldn't restore the os to factory so I wiped it clean and installed Win7 64bit... other than that, the only other thing that has changed from one pc to another was taking an old HDD from an old computer and formatting it then installing it into the newer pc...

More about : lights dell xps 420

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June 24, 2014 4:19:14 PM

Well, thanks to no one, I figured it out... I installed a GPU from my old PC in and now the PC works, so it was indeed the GPU that failed... Moderator, please close this...
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