Computer Death(?)

DevoutlyApathetic

So I was watching a mounted DVD image on my year old Dell Dimension E510 when it locked up on the playback. Wasn't getting any response from Media Center, couldn't Alt+tab out or anything. No big deal thinks I, and hold down the power button for the five seconds to force it to shut down. Wait about half a minute, press power button again....and the LED flashes orange and nothing else happens.

If I hold down the LED it will Flash orange repeatedly but nothing kicks on. No booting into BIOS, nothing. Tried unplugging it and letting it sit for about half an hour but it doesn't do anything different when I tried it again.

So....WTF? Any thoughts on either how to fix it or at least what the hell happened?

ElectricTurtle

Which LED is this? Power, battery, HD?

DevoutlyApathetic

Sorry, the idiot light on the front embedded behind the power switch. It flashes for less than a second when pressed then goes off, repeats after about 4 seconds.

Only one LED I see inside the case, near were the data cables for the hard drives link to the board which is on as normal.

ElectricTurtle

There is information regarding light codes here, can you tell me what the diagnostic lights on the back say?

As it is, you might try reseating the ram.

DevoutlyApathetic

Alright, looks like it's doing the "Blinking Amber" code which is "Power Supply or System Board Failure", lovely.

I'm not getting any of the other light codes at all. Aside from the flashing power LED nothing happens when I press the button.

Tried reseating the ram, no change.

This is annoyingly nothing like what I was expecting it to be. Of course the base warrant ran out about a month ago...

DevoutlyApathetic

Well this is interesting.

Running on the assumption that it'd be tough to screw a computer that doesn't POST up more, I started playing inside the case. Disconnected the DVD drive entirely. Unhooked the power to the HDD's, then the board...pretty much everything. Removed the extra ram I'd inserted a year ago.

So when I reconnected the board and CPU power I got the computer to POST. As nothing else was hooked up this was less than helpful. Reconnected everything....nothing.

Slowing working my way back up it seems the killer was to go from a aborted boot to have the USB connections active (A hub, IR input or Wireless modem). Fucking weird.

Still haven't reconnected the DVD drive, I'll fix that when I get sick of pushing F1 to boot. I'm still mightily confused as to what happened to cause this.

My thanks Electric Turtle, the manual of Dell's site was helpful to my explorations with the PSU connections.

Edit: Further investigations seem to indicate that the USB wireless adapter was the culprit....WTF?