I have a Dell E510 desktop. Complaint was: "won't turn on, nothing works". Went over and sure enuff it was completely dead (it WAS plugged in), so I brought it home. The power button shows a constant blinking amber light. None of the 4 diagnostic lights in front light up. Downloaded the service manual and the blinking amber means a power supply or system board failure has occurred. The lack of diagnostic lights probably mean a possible pre-BIOS failure has occurred. Isolated the PSU and did the green/black wire jump start and the PSU (fans run) cranks up. Plug it back into the Mother Board and its dead. Isolated the board from all drives and still nothing. I do have the bright green light ??? on the board but due to the lack of power there are no beeps either. Sooo.....the board seems to be shorting out the PSU???? I guess it is time to order a new board (Dell "intel" HJ054) unless one of you can think of anything I have missed. Any help is always appreciated from all you in this forum. The computer is 1.5 yrs young and there was only a 1 yr service agreement, so to avoid the nightmare of dealing with Dell: where is the bestest cheapest fastest place to get a OEM or compatible board? Pre-thanks

well it may not be the board just because the psu fired up when you done the green/black wire startup doesnt mean that the psu is actually working properly it means that it has enough power to Switch on but not enough to provide the system the power to start up. if you have a multimeter test the psu do a google search for how to tes ta psu using a multimeter alteratively i would just suggest trying another psu, borrow one from another system (that works) you have lieing around.

The jumper wire test doesn't tell you much other than the PSU is putting out enough juice to spin the cooling fan. Even a multimeter isn't all that useful...sure, you can use it to verify that the voltages are within tolerance, but if the amperages aren't there, the system won't fire up. Do as AlwaysWillingToLearn suggested, try another PSU, but don't buy one unless you're sure that's what the problem is... "And that's the fishing line, because Sharkboy said so!"

i know this might sound a bit stupid, but i bought an older dell (something like an optiplex gx260) as faulty, I was told it had a faulty psu due to the orange light, but I actually found the CPU was missing (although heatsink was in place) and that was why it would not work. I do not know if this pc you are working on is someone's home PC or one in an office where it is possible the cpu might have been stolen. Apart from that point, I totally agree with the previous replies that you can not assume it is a faulty motherboard from the psu test. PSUs might 'appear' to work fine with no load on them and then fail when put under load.

Here's where I am at. Got a PSU tester (FrozenCPU) and all the LED's light up but the -5v. Thot that was the problem until I remembered reading: Note: Newer 24-pin power supplies often do not supply the -5V line anymore since it is no longer needed by modern motherboards. If your power supply tester's -5V LED doesn't light up with a 24-pin power supply, it is not an error. The power supply is functioning properly. This computer is a year and a half old and has the 24 pin, so it must be a modern motherboard??? Have any of you run into this on a psu test ??? And what do you think of these little testers? I guess if the psu is good, it points me back to the MB.