Xps 600 diagnostic lights 4, flashing amber

kieferton87

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Jun 25, 2011
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Hello,
My Dell XPS 600 just shut down and when I attempted to power it up, all I got was the power light blinking amber and diag light 4 ON. Is this an indication of a power supply failure, motherboard failure, or both?
 

LKeels

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Jun 26, 2011
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I've dealt with this on three systems now and in every case, someone had forced a USB connector into one of the front ports, crushing the pins and causing a short. Straightening the pins fixed it every time.
 

kieferton87

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Jun 25, 2011
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18,510
That's interesting. Never would have thought of that.

Anyway, after researching online and taking a close look at the motherboard, I could see that some of the transistors/capacitors were discolored and appeared to have swelled up and discharged something. There was also a burnt smell that I noticed just shortly before the computer blanked out. This was consistent with what I read about Dell's XPS 600 machines having failure-prone motherboards.

I decided to abandon it and purchase a new computer. The hard drive was unaffected by all this so I'm able to retrieve my data without too much difficulty.