OK first off I know I should have backed everything up.. welllllll I didn't ,,,, Anyway the question is this my old Dell Dimension 3000 is not used much since I got my laptop, and this morning I went and turned it on to look at some pictures from the trail cams... NADA NOTHING just a blinking yellow led on the front. So other than taking it and using it for target practice whats wrong and how can I fix it????
Puter geeks
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Does the monitor have any display? If not, you might be in luck - the PC starts from a built-in program and if the memory in the PC is faulty you will get no display. If there is some printing on the monitor that indicates that it is trying to start then most likely the hard disk drive's spindle has locked-up(dried-up grease? - I'm not sure, but I have seen PC's hard drives that have never been used lock up during storage). The hard disk drive(HDD) has all of your data stored on it and if it is malfunctioning it is rather expensive to send it to a data recovery company. On the other hand if there is no display your HDD might be okay and you can connect the HDD to a different PC and retrieve your data. If your PC will run with less memory than it currently has you can remove and swap memory sticks(DIMMs) until you have removed the faulty memory and your PC will boot up and run with less memory. Good luck!
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First things first, there is a small battery on the motherboard that keeps time and holds the bios program. You probably need to change that.
Open the cover and look for a silver button about the size of a dime.
replace the battery and try restarting the computer.
I don't think that anything else is wrong with it, If it ran fine when you put it away then it should run fine now. I've had used computers that were in storage for 10+ years.
Open the cover and look for a silver button about the size of a dime.
replace the battery and try restarting the computer.
I don't think that anything else is wrong with it, If it ran fine when you put it away then it should run fine now. I've had used computers that were in storage for 10+ years.
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search on the internet for "Dell amber LED" or something similar.
Here is one "how to fix it"
http://www.instructables.com/id/Fix-the-Dell-OLOD-Orange-Light-Of-Death/
I had a Dell that sat for a while and when I tried to start nothing but some light like you state (don't recall yellow, green, blue, red, pink or what color). It ended up the power supply for that computer was dead - I could have replaced the power supply for not too much $ but the computer was not worth any more money into it.
I had another old desktop that would start.
Took the hard drive out (of the broken computer) and set it up as a "slave drive" by moving some little jumpers and then connecting it into the working computer. I think this drive ended up being drive D or E or F...
Took all of the data off of the "slave drive" and put it onto a CD or DVD disk (the working computer had that drive) but I guess now it would be easy to use a large USB drive and move it in steps to the computer where you want it.
Recycled the old computer - kept the drive "just in case I ever need one"
Here is one "how to fix it"
http://www.instructables.com/id/Fix-the-Dell-OLOD-Orange-Light-Of-Death/
I had a Dell that sat for a while and when I tried to start nothing but some light like you state (don't recall yellow, green, blue, red, pink or what color). It ended up the power supply for that computer was dead - I could have replaced the power supply for not too much $ but the computer was not worth any more money into it.
I had another old desktop that would start.
Took the hard drive out (of the broken computer) and set it up as a "slave drive" by moving some little jumpers and then connecting it into the working computer. I think this drive ended up being drive D or E or F...
Took all of the data off of the "slave drive" and put it onto a CD or DVD disk (the working computer had that drive) but I guess now it would be easy to use a large USB drive and move it in steps to the computer where you want it.
Recycled the old computer - kept the drive "just in case I ever need one"
If it ends up being the power supply, Dell's are proprietary and not cheap.
If you just want the data, get one of these http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812232002 and pull the hard drive out of the desktop and transfer it to the laptop http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUVz_R8kKnY - or better yet, get a USB hard drive and back your data up
(I haven't used that device or watched that video myself, just posting examples)
I've been there and done that. Had a drive die and lost a lot of pictures of my kids when they were babies and family that is no longer around.
And I'm NOT a computer geek.....but I do work around a lot of them
..
If you just want the data, get one of these http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812232002 and pull the hard drive out of the desktop and transfer it to the laptop http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUVz_R8kKnY - or better yet, get a USB hard drive and back your data up
(I haven't used that device or watched that video myself, just posting examples)
I've been there and done that. Had a drive die and lost a lot of pictures of my kids when they were babies and family that is no longer around.
And I'm NOT a computer geek.....but I do work around a lot of them
..