Dell Dimension 8400 wont boot up - Page 2

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This thread has been a well of information. I too have a Dell Dimension 8400. But I have experienced a slightly different problem. My Dell doesn't do anything when I try to power up. No fan, no lights nothing. I have checked the power strip and cord, all are fine. Inside the case when its plugged in I see the small green LED light on the mobo, other than that its a boat anchor.

Over the last 6 months or so I would have trouble using the reset button when the computer froze. I would have to unplug it to get it to cycle. About 4 months ago, while at work, my Girlfriend told me that it made a lot of noise like a jet engine taking off, much like what others have described above. She had to unplug it to get it to stop and since then its happen a few times. The last time i had to shut it down before this, it didnt want to come back on for a little bit. started to power up then went dead, waited a little bit and hit the button again and it booted up fine.

Am I correct in thinking its either the power supply (probably not) or the Motherboard (most likely)? I am really considering Joefriday's solution about just getting a new case, fan and mobo to solve the design flaws of the 8400 case. Or should I just get the dell mobo to replace it? Money is an issue but this replacement solution looks like it comes with a lot of benefits and want to know how hard is it to do?

Thanks for all replies.

just spent most of the afternoon trying to fix one of these.. first power light was flashing amber then completely dead. What seemed to do the trick in the end was holding the power button and moving the CMOS reset jumper & password reset jumper around (sorry can't be more precise but I was just about throwing everything at it so difficult to tell what actually got it going.. including prodding the CPU from the part of the super sized heatsink that covers it).

sorry if this doesn't solve anyone else's problem but I thought it would be worth putting it in as there is no definitive solution as yet.

A slightly different problem with my 8400 if anyone can help. Ive checked out quite a few forums and tried different fixes. No luck.

Two weeks ago I tried to boot up and got the flashing amber light. No boot at all.No fan, nothing. Contacted Dell CS / India and they walked me through opening the case, step 2- unplug 24 pin plug to the motherboard and replug.Green light was on and still is. Tried to boot ...nothing. Step 3 remove both memory sticks and replace. At this point I got frustrated trying to understand the Indian accent and ended the call. Tried to boot up and everything came up fine. No more issues. Everything normal.

Two weeks later the same flashing amber light and no boot, tried pulling the memory sticks with no luck. As I stated before, I have checked for bent USB pins that might be shorting out, pulled out each plug to each piece of hardware and repluged, looked for MB corrosion, pulled all cards and replaced. All of these I got from different forums. Dell says the flashing light indicates a hardware problem and I think that I'm down to my power supply. I found a test with a multimeter but I'm not an electronics guy. The readings that I got seem really off from what I should be getting but Im not sure if I'm reading it correctly. My multimeter has a "auto range" selector mode so I don't know if I can mess up the readings or not.

Thanks for any help from anyone !!

i forgot to also mention that not everytime did my computer want to take off... about half the time it was a black screen... bios wouldnt load or anything.. mobo problem?? now that i think about it, my problem all started when i bought my linksys wireless card. i took it out today and noticed it was bowed a little.... wtf how does that happen? defect i guess. well its all still working now, so if i get the same problem ill try taking my card out and see what happens

One more note: The Antec Basiq has an ON/OFF switch and the panel on the back of my Dell Dimension 8400 did not have a hole for that so I took some wire cutters and “modified” it. Not pretty looking but effective and easy to do.

Found this thread in a search for 'dimension yellow power light', and glad I did. My situation is different in that my almost 6 yr old dell is a 4300 model (P-IV @ 1.7GHz), but I recently started experiencing the no boot problem with the steady amber power light. In my case, the fans don't do anything weird. The DVD & CDRW drives spin up but there's no post (or video signal at least) and no keyboard or mouse power. Trying to boot from a XP CD does not work.

A few days ago, when I returned from vacation, I was greeted by this no boot condition. Took several attempts using the power switch built into the power supply to power off & on to get a successful boot and green power light. I've just decided to leave the pc on for now.

In my 4300, only the processor and MB are stock. The power supply, memory & AGP card and HDD's have all been upgraded. Guess I'll have to check for swollen capacitors, but if they look good, I'll try another power supply and/or will have to bite the bullet and get a new machine. (Was trying to avoid that since I had this desktop set up to run so well.)

Thanks to all who have posted suggestions.

I have a dell dimension 8400 and was told the mother board is bad. Where can I get a new or used one as Dell does not have one. I have tried to order it from there.

Wow, there are a lot of Dell bashers out there! I work with many types of computers in a University setting and I can tell you that Dells are great machines. I have an 8400 at home and it works well. There is a small problem with the SATA ports but as a transitional type machine it is great...runs super fast.

I see motherboard/processor replacements on Dells, Apples, HPs, IBMs and Toshibas.

From reading a lot of these issues, it seems the culprit was many different unrelated hardware issues. However, it seems this machine runs hot (I can attest).

We've been plugging in 4GB RAM and 256 Graphics cards etc and you should expect for it to run hot.
Do some calculations...check how many watts each device will put out and how much of a strain it is putting on your power supply. You may need to upgrade your power supply and/or plug in some additional fans.

Don't forget when your machine is running well, preventative maintenance is the key.

--Josh--

I am a church music director and got a Dell Dimension 8400 in the fall of 2004. I did have the fan or whatever make a loud noise on boot up a time or two in the past, now that I see it in print. I had to replace the DVD drive on it I think, but it was in warranty at that time.

A couple of weeks ago I started it up and it jammed up. I had to hold the power button down to shut it off. When I rebooted it said something like Windows/system32 config file is missing or corrupt. Use the repair panel to fix. I tried and it didn't work. I transferred data off of the HD and tried to use my secondary as the primary. I could get it seen in BIOS and with disk management, but the Windows CD wouldn't see it and the Western Digital disk couldn't see it either. Same with the new replacement I had bought for the secondary. I finally took it to the repair shop. They found bulging and one leaking capacitors. A MOB would be close to $400 installed. I didn't want to have a repeat nor put that much money into it. They had a new one I could buy, but I decided I was soured on Dell and couldn't get it approved for purchase quickly anyhow since the computer was around $1000-$1100.

So, I went to get the computer back. Then the owner said he could try a Raid card to bypass the mobo for the HD operation. So far that has worked, but I haven't used the computer a lot since then.

With this being a known issue with so many computers and apparently faulty design and parts from Dell, I doubt I ever buy a Dell again.

Ok, similar problem as the rest with Dell Dimension 8400 but found resolution for this one….that I offered to look at for a friend:

Started with errors like “Amount of system memory has changed” , “Memory write read failure at ….”, “Diskette drive 0 seek failure” “Press F1 to continue F2 setup utility”…..sometimes it would go onto windows and other times it would not and give me file corrupt errors…very sporadic.

Amount of system memory has changed led me to believe it was RAM related so started there. Had two modules so took out one, same issue, took it out and put in the second one and the computer would not boot, began beeping with error code 1-3-2, which from the manual is memory related. Also the diagnostic lights had AB-Green and CD-Amber, which again memory detected but memory failure occurred according to manual. Took out all memory modules and restarted expecting to get a different diagnostic lights, but received the same. Inspected the mother board and found a domed Capacitor next to memory modules. Bought new one and replaced the blown one. Installed new memory and still received the same beep pattern and lights. Getting really frustrated at this point, I removed the CMOS battery to clear, replaced it after about 30 seconds. Turned on again and WOW back to booting and able to get to bios settings.

Now that I am back to bios and with new RAM the Amount of system memory has changed error is gone but still getting drive 0 seek failure, but after getting the correct bios settings all is good again.

Hope that helps someone.
BTW, bios version is A02….which I plan to update. I do repair for friends and family and never seen a bad CPU, rarely bad motherboard which is typically bad capacitors. Usually see power supply, bad hard drives, or memory related issues.

If the front power light is blinking then you are getting some power from your power supply. Check the P2 (4-pin) connector, been lots of reports of those frying. Its located just below and left of the CPU shroud. The smell should be strong at that point and it should be obvious if it burned judging from your report. If you end up replacing your power supply get at least 500W, I believe the 8400 ships with a 350W, but with the added components you should upgrade.

If the power supply smells pretty strong then its more than likely the power supply. The only other thing to do is to make sure the 24 pin connector is in tight and good......might want to inspect that too just to make sure nothing fried but problem is probably internal to the power supply. If the 24 pin is good, then get ya a new power supply and hopefully once replaced all will be good again.

I had an issue 2-3 months ago with my 8400 where the power supply smelled hot and unhappy. It turned out that the power supply's internal fan was dying; this accounted for the smell (fan motor straining and burning out) and heat (poorly cooled power supply). I ordered a replacement fan from Mouser Electronics (mfr part #AD0812HS-A70GL-LF) and, with the help of a screwdriver and soldering gun, replaced the fan. Fan + shipping was about $15.

A caveat: I believe that the fan change was successful - the fan runs as it should, and the warm/burning smell is gone - though I just today started having the "orange light" problem. After reading through this forum, I checked the PS connection to the mobo (labelled P2), and found when I disconnected it that it was alarmingly dark & slightly charred. I suspect that's due to adding a second SATA drive a few weeks ago along with cumulative damage over time as described throughout this thread.

Now I just need to decide what to do about the orange light issue - computer boots again, but one wonders for how long? Perhaps the joefriday's excellent cheap LGA replacement suggestion, w/ a higher-rated power supply...

-crispy

Hi that must be all the Dell 8400 owners out there all experiencing basically the same problem !! Mine too has the solid amber light at boot up and Jet engine CPU fan. My P2 connector was charred on the two yellow wire pins (3 & 4?). No diagnostic lights on the back. My wiggling the socket (reseating it) on startup allowed me to get away with the problem for a couple of weeks but a couple of days ago I attempted to clean the pins with a very small screwdriver and now it will not get to full boot up, loud fan and amber light on front only. I replaced the P2 plug (off another cactus power supply) so I know those pins are fine but cannot say for certain how good the ones are in the socket on the MOB.
Have tried all the combinations of start up - no RAM no ISA cards, disconnected front I/O connector, cleared BIOS, reseated all plugs, checked for bulging capacitors (there were none). I have no reason to suspect faulty power supply but I now, having read some of your earlier comments good people, that my CPU may be dodgy and or the MOB may be dodgy. Two things I shall do next, take out the mother board and test the connectivity on the P2 pins that are heat scorched. I shall also take off the heat sink and take out the CPU to inspect for any pin or heat issues..... failing that, I shall take it to my local PC repair man to conduct his diagnosis on all the possible component points of failure and let him try to isolate the issue. Incidentally, I bought mine early 2005 and I have to say for most of the time it has been pretty good other than the Seagate hard drive partial failure I had very early on but it was not that bad that I couldn't keep using it. Thanks for all your input folks, hope my bit has helped someone out there.
rgdz John T

Hi, is your 8400 still going OK? Was the re-pasting all you had to do and has it been fine since then? I'm keen to know. Was your problem intermittent? ie was it only failing on start up occasionally? Did it fully fail, that is stop booting completely before you tried pasting the CPU again?

Thanks John T

One night I left my 8400 to converting a DVD to iPod movie file. When I returned the next morning the fan was at what appeared to be full speed. I turned off the computer, turned it back on, and it wouldn't boot. I took note of the beeping pattern which turned out to be a memory issue. I pulled my memory out of the slots 2-4 and it booted once again. I checked each piece of memory in slot 1 and the computer fired up fine with each individually. I then tried slots 1 and 2, 1 and 3, etc. The only combination that works is 1 and 2, if there is memory in slots 3 or 4 the computer won't boot but the fan doesn't go crazy. If I have memory in all four slots the fan does go crazy. At this point I am living with only one stick (1gb) of RAM.

I am debating buying an inexpensive case with better cooling (Antec 300), cheap MB, new PS, and moving other peripherals over.

I'm experiencing the P2 connector problem. I would say the image below shows the result of a faulty design by Dell as others have alluded to. Probably too much current is being drawn through this connector which leads to the overheating and damage.

I have the same problem...

About a week ago, my computer failed to boot and the cooling fan sounded like it was going to take off...
I measured the voltages from the power supply and they were ok...
I removed all unnecessary cards and CD/DVD players from the system - same results..
Sometimes it will boot and run for a short while... Sometimes, it won't even allow entry to BIOS...
I would guess a heat sensor is telling the system it has overheated... It seems to work when it is cool - till it heats up just a little..

I talked to DELL technical support, they said the motherboard has a problem. But, they wouldn't say what...
I asked about purchasing a new motherboard. But, DELL no longer sells it. I asked about a motherboard with a similar footprint... They wanted to sell me a new computer...

In the past, I tried to place a standard PC motherboard into a DELL case and had no such luck..
So, I'm guessing that I cannot purchase any motherboard to put in the case..
So, it looks like it will go the way of the junk pile..

Had the Amber light problem with a refusal to boot up .. Called a knowledgeable friend and was asked to unplug all of my USB components just leaving the keyboard plugged in.
My Dell booted up in it's usual manner .. I shut down and plugged in the printer and it booted up OK .. preformed this procedure until I tried starting with my USB Hub, this is when I got the Amber light and a refusal to boot .. if you are having this problem, this procedure maybe helpful, it's an easy, fast, and cheap trick if it works .. gl Don R

There are a lot of posts here - going back over a year- by people who have had what mostly appear to be power related problems.

First let me say that I had over 5 years of trouble free service from my Dell 8400 (from the hardware that is - had some normal software issues) and still use it as a media center pc.

I noted that maced62 mentioned "Quite a bit of dust on the video card". He did not mention the rest of the case - in particular the air intake fans/filters and psu intake fan - but it is a safe bet there was considerable dust there too unless he regularly cleaned those while ignoring the video card fan. I have known many who let their systems get extemely dusty - in fact some with that had systems for several years and never even thought of cleaning the dust inside or from intake ports. Not even after consistent increases in fan noise warned of an impending problem.

Dust of course restricts airflow and insulates heat and can increase the temperature inside the case considerably. In the the extreme case - increased temperature increases voltage (or maybe amps - been awhile since I studied this) which further increases heat in an escalating fashion.

I wonder how many of the power related problems (whether power supply, or burned connectors, or charred mobo, or blown capacitors) might trace back to a root cause of dust. I do not mean to belabor the point - just hope to make it clear to less knowledgeable readers of the importance of cleaning out the dust - off the electrical components but also out of the air intake and exhaust points as well. Since maced62 has considerable electronoics experience, this may not be his issue, but it may help save other readers from fates similar to some of the posters on this thread.

Gotta look at this, I had the same problem, but I took the computer a part and reassembled it one part at a time. First thing I noticed was that the on board battery was putting out 2.5v instead of 3.3v never once did the motherboard complain. Replaced it with new battery and replaced each compoinet one at a time, I don't know how I missed it but the chip on the modem was blown half off. Replaced it with a new one and it boots up fine.

No because it has drivers consolidated into O/S that are specific to the hardware in the old system. If you replaced with the exact same components (or maybe very similar - same manufacturer and similar model) AND were very lucky, it might.

However you do not need to lose your data. While you cannot boot from your old drive in a new system, you can install it in the new system as a non-bootable drive and read your data off it. Then, should you wish, after once having saved the data, you could reformat the drive and and start using it all over again as an additional drive - and copy back yoiur saved data if you so desired.

Alternatively, you could put the drive in another computer and do basically the same thing as above, and after saving your data and reformating the drive - put it into your new build and start fresh - reloading your O/S, drivers, and data from the old drive. However, with the low cost and larger size of drives today, I think I would get a new drive for the O/S and consider adding the old drive to the new system to store data. If it was 4 or 5 years old, I think I would only store items I did not care if I lost - such as copies of DVD discs I have, unless I knew this to be a short term use for just one or two years before I replaced it - in which case I would not be concerned.

The mean average life to failure on drives is something like 10 to 20 years, so statistically speaking, you should be able to continue using it without concern. But I would be hesitant. If it were newer, I would not worry at all. You might also run a quick Disc Check on it to ensure it is in relatively good condition.

Regarding Joe's suggestion, it does appear to be an excellent way to inexpensively handle a mobo problem. Are you sure that is what you have? Have you spotted damage on your mobo as others noted? It seems like quite a few ohter posters traced their problem back to other components. One thing you might want to do before purchasing a new mobo is to see if you can at least isolate the problem down to being mobo/cpu/memory issue.

To do the above:
1. First test your graphics card in another system, and if it works reinstall it.
2. Find another PSU so yours is out of the loop - can be a small one since it won't be running much - but should be one you know works fine.
3. Disconnect all components from the PSU
4. Disconnect - from the mobo - the HD and all peripherals, including optical drive, key, mouse, and any other peripheral components, especially USB devices - leave only the CPU, HSF, one stick of memory and the graphics card, with the latter connected to the monitor. And leave the power switch connected to the mobo
5. Connect the new PSU only to the mobo (both connectors if it has 2 - I forgot since it has been so long since I worked on mine "under the hood" ) and graphics card if it has one.
6. Turn on system and see if it boots.
7. If system does not boot - you can try it with a different stick of memory or replacing the cpu and hsf if you have some good old or borrowed components available - or maybe available cheaply from eBay if you are willing to invest the time and cost (and risk that someone may send a bad component while saying it is good).
8. If the system does boot, add back components one at a time to isolate the problem child, probably starting with the memory, keyboard, then the HD and on.

By the way, as I posted above, I have a Dell 8400 that has given me 5 years of excellent service - 4 as my main machine and 1 relegated to media center use after I upgraded to get a faster machine and chose to build my own. Since I bought the Dell on eBay for about $700, I think I received excellent value for my money - at about $11 a month for a computer that was fairly heavily used. I am sorry your experience has been a poor one.

Lots of great information in this thread. Another displeased Dell Dimension 8400 owner here. I've had/have many of the same problems - racing fan, failure to boot etc Looks like I'll be trying to save the data instead of trying to save the machine. It looks like I'd just be throwing good money after bad. I've bought my last Dell.

Gosh this thread was useful. Here I am posting my results, because I see this thread is still active and I suspect there are 8400 owners out there who will be able to use whatever info I post.

My machine was four years old, a 3.4 gig processor and 2 sticks of 1 gig ram on a Rev 00A system board bearing the part number with the "U" and the 7s and 0s. Original Dell-installed video was an nvidia 6800 GTO on which I re-enabled the fourth bank of processors, but which I did not overclock. Three years ago I replaced the 6800 GTO with an 8800 Ultra and installed a good aftermarket 650 watt power supply.

Three-plus weeks ago it started giving me odd crashes every other day or so, going to double black screens and a hard lock, no noise, nothing, requiring a 30-second push button reset.

It did this only when playing heavy use 3D games or when in the OpenGL screensaver. After it happened twice I set the system on its side and ran with the case open. After the first crash with case-open both the power supply and video card were quite hot.

I installed RivaTuner to monitor GPU temp, since the 190 series nvidia driver sets don't seem to have any option to do that. I found that the GPU was running at 77 deg C at IDLE! Not good. I set the GPU fan to run at 100% all the time, which dropped idle running temp to 60-61 deg C and full bore HD Fallout 3 temps when lots of atmospherics were up to 72-73 deg C. I also checked power supply output and found no significant drops in any of the output channels.

I figured a Windows Update -- which I had JUST completed -- had interferred with GPU fan operation. The problem went away for five days.

Then of course it came back, more frequent than ever.

On the weekend of the 5th the lockups' frequency increased to once every hour or two and happened irrespective of video usage or GPU core temp. The lockups happened at GPU idle. Reboots became problematical. With the case open I noted that some boots "failed" only because the video card failed to re-init. I could see this because the GPU fan didn't start. On a hunch, I waited a while, hit ctrl-alt-delete, entered the WinXP Pro password, and got the Windows sign-in song. Waiting a bit more, hitting alt-F4 and "return" got me a sign off tune. So... Windows was booting and the system was THINKING the video card was there, but the video card never started successfully.

I pulled the 8800 Ultra and rebooted, which gave me a long delay and then 2 beeps -- NOT a "no video song but instead ..... Memory error!

I was able to repeat this consistently.

I didn't have any video cards around to test. The 6800 GTO is in my wife's new machine and all the older PCI cards went to charity last year.... so I put the 8800 back in, let the system sit for a while unplugged, and then rebooted. It came back fine and ran for a few hours.

Last Sunday the system went 100% failure after a crash and REFUSED to boot no matter how long I waited. I pulled the system board battery, waited an hour, and got nothing at all with the video card and 2 beeps without.

Careful examination showed me that several of the bigger canned caps on the system board around the power entry points and memory were bulging a little. The memory is premium lifetime warranty stuff... and I suspect strongly -- but am not sure -- that the board is bad....

Yes, at this point I could have repaired the system for less by going with a new cpu and board combo in a new case, but (1) I wanted to recover the SATA/AHCI drives' data without any hitches, and (2) because of the proprietary software I run for graphics, software development, and CAD, I'm really restricted to a real Intel processor. (Trust me on this please. I know AMDs are just as good or faster for less bucks these days.) The easiest way to address (1) is to reassemble the same system with new parts, and it would be difficult given (2) to surpass the performance of the 8400 for a lower price point sticking to Intel CPUs unless apps are highly multithreaded.

The Dell 8400 system board failure is SO widespread you can actually go onto ebay and get "Dell 8400 System Board Repair Kits" full of electrolytic caps ... but I figure that's problematical. I really don't want to be soldering on this for an hour or two and then still have any problems. The only way to be sure, of course, is to dust off and nuke it from orbit.

Thus, I got onto ebay and ordered a New Dell 8400 system board from a guy with 100% feedback in Round Rock. It was much pricier than the "tested/guaranteed" units from Hong Kong, but it was new and 80 miles away. I ordered a used/tested 775 LGA 3.6 gig/2M L2/800 fsb Prescott P4 from a guy with 8000+ 100% feedback. The chip arrived in 2 days and the system board in 4 -- total expenditure about $150.

Last Saturday night I assembled the new CPU to the new system board, cleaned the heat sink in acetone and then with compressed air, and mated it to the new processor with some premium Antec silver content heat sink compound that cost five times what the regular compound did but which has an order of magnitude better thermal conductivity. I figured given the discussions here about the Prescott's heat, it couldn't hurt, and the difference was only four bucks at the local computer parts mart.

I installed the old memory, hooked up the drives, and used the old 8800 Ultra. I did replace the power supply with a new Corsair 750 I had previously ordered because it was on sale and I expected to build a new "ultimate" system sometime soon.

I hooked up the cables, flipped the switches, pushed the button, and almost immediately got two beeps.

I pulled the video card.

Two beeps.

Quite late I headed out to the local super Walmart, but of course they have only network bits now. It's been a few years since I looked for computer parts in the middle of the night, OK?

Sunday morning I went to BestBuy and found to my surprise that they had a reasonable price on an open box/warranty ATI Radeon 4850 1 gig GDDR3 -- a hundred bucks ( I would have preferred nvidia because I've dabbled in CUDA development, but if you follow the tech news over the past year you know that nvidia doesn't really have anything new below the top end stuff, and it would be VERY tough to match the performance of that 8800 Ultra....). While I was there I picked up four 1 gig sticks of PC2-6400 DDR2 SDRAM because their price was only a couple bucks a stick more than mail order. And I've been without the machine for a week and really can't wait another week. And I did already mention nuking it from orbit.

So I go home and install the ATI card. At this point, it's new system board, new power supply, new video, new CPU, old memory and drives.

Flip the switches and push the button... and I get a CPU fan trying to push the box into a full military power VTOL departure.

I never heard a CPU fan run that hard in my life. But I did find it discussed in this thread. Symptom of a bad video card, if I remember correctly.

New system board, new CPU, old memory, no video.

Two beeps.

That's ALMOST interesting.... OK.....

Old system board, old CPU, old memory, new video.

There go the Marines taking off again in their V22. Not a bad video card, methinks.

Old system board, old CPU, new memory, old video.

Turbines to speed, Batman!

I'm not going to play musical processors and switch CPUs and boards out. Once they're in the socket I don't want to pull them out unnecessarily. Besides, if the old board blew it might have taken the old CPU with it, as far as things look now.

So... whatever happened blew the system board OR CPU plus the video AND memory. Maybe one was iffy and then something else went. But all at the same time? Odd. But there it is.

Yes, I know how to build computers so why did I buy a Dell? At times it's more cost-effective to get a particular level of performance out of parts, and sometimes you get a deal on a box that someone else puts together. At the time I bought it the Dell 8400 was highly reviewed and it beat do-it-yourself by $200 to $400. At least in the short run it did.

Yes, I could have built most of a new, far more powerful system for about the same total cash, especially given that I had the power supply lying around. In fact, I recently DID build a killer system for just a little more than all the new parts plus the power supply cost ... my wife's new system for school: Asus M4A79T 790FX, Phenom II X4 945 Deneb, 4 gig DDR3, dual Caviar 640gig SATA in RAID 1, OCZ 700GXSSLI .... all in a nifty XCLIO case with greenish purple lit LIZA plastic fans a foot across. But in that case I wasn't worried about keeping data around. We knew we were upgrading so we backed it all up and threw away most of the old machine.

SO... if you absolutely must recover your 8400 you can do it, but if you can risk not salvaging the data on the drives run by the proprietary system board's SATA controller, you can indeed build a new and better system from the good scraps.

And I will never buy a Dell again.

- EP, San Antonio, TX

My 2 cents: Same problem as most, jet engine, no signal to monitor, no lights or beeps. Pulled out all but one memory module, was able to at least get blue screen of death, went in and changed HDD configuration on utility startup, put in other 3 mem modules; running good- knock on wood! I purchase an as-is mobo, cpu, and heat sink from Ebay, didn't change anything, tried everyone's tips and tricks - nothing, reverted back to old mobo and cpu and for some reason, this is when I was able to get to blue screen of death.

Well, I spoke too soon,

I completely disassembled the machine and removed the motherboard from the case. Upon very close inspection, I discovered that 4 of the capacitors that were behind the CPU and under the cooling fan had begun to rupture downward, with some leaking a bit of their contents.

I at least feel vindicated that my memory upgrade attempt didn't cause this (-:, though not realizing the ducting could be easily removed for cleaning (to lower temps) puts the blame back on me.

Will replace the mobo if I find one that's reasonably priced...