No POST on Sundays - Dell Precision

[@donaldfilbert4832]

Excellent video - full of interesting and relevant information. Presented in a concise and systematic manner. Very informative !!! Thanks !!

[@sergiomarroquinjr3587]

Remember to check the 'new' batteries as well, I have opened a new pack and did the replacement only to find the new battery was flat as well. Love this new series!

[@payusavisit3482]

I'm very comfortable watching, learning, and listening. You're the best, thank you

[@kenwalsh6245]

yes same as the others very clear and straight to the point well done sir

[@nian60]

Great video. Thank you as always Graham. 💖

[@damann522]

Great lesson Thank You.

[@dandel351]

This was a short but very useful video. I'll remember to look out for those 2032's acting up as I have PC's that are getting on a bit now.

[@Adamant_IT]

Really really really common. I've seen brand new mobos with flat 2032 cells in them, sometimes it's just a duff coin cell because of mass-production by the lowest bidder. I check on pretty much any system that I've had the cover off of.

[@harryburton959]

Excellent review. It is such a pleasure to see a real repair tech in action. Love these type of videos. Your presentation, photography, and teaching skills are super. Please more of these.

[@Nico_335i_DCT]

I like these 'simple' repairs a lot. Thanks for sharing Graham. Have a good one. Regards Nico.

[@malc568]

I like these types of videos.

[@johnnys25s]

That CPU fan is upside down. Good video ! Keep doing this !

[@aimebob]

can't believe he didn't mention it. It triggered me a lot xd

[@MMBaconslice]

Excellent work sir!

[@shoffmann70]

I hope you had fun blowing all the dust out of the case on that one! Thanks for sharing this informative video on PC boot errors. I actually learned something today. I've built PC's from scratch and converted Windows to Linux on many PCs since 2005; and never ran into that boot problem before. Cheers!

[@somewaresim]

Thanks Graham - useful troubleshooting info

[@rolfsinkgraven]

A nice collection of problems, nice video.

[@limaxmusic533]

Thank you so much. It doesn't matter if it's a 15 min video or a 1h video, i'm still learning a lot from you. Thank you for doing this, you are amazing

[@geofftottenperthcoys9944]

I have been running 4 sticks of ram for over 12 months on my system, no issues at all.

[@wisher21uk]

Nice fix and brilliant explanation thanks 😊

[@brandonhurst2188]

Ran the service tag on an old dell tower. It had raid on 2 HDDs stock. Its a socket 775 pentium 4

[@coladict]

I don't think you noticed that when you changed to a legacy boot again the boot order was different. Now the SSD was first, where as before it was second. There could be a boot sector on that hard drive that was trying to load, but had no Windows it could find on itself.

[@Adamant_IT]

That might've been it, yea 👍 To really be certain you need to check through everything or try things one at a time, and usually it's faster to just bash a couple of different settings in and there's a good chance you'll get lucky first or second try.

[@harriscom9255]

Interesting video, many thanks.

[@j1e1r1r1o1]

like a breath of fresh air ❤ love to watch!

[@carlojoselitochua2954]

Done watching, thank you very much for the informative repair video. I have learned significantly more troubleshooting & repair lessons in this tutorial video and to your other repair videos as well compared to my ENTIRE 4 YEARS OF COLLEGE due to the rotten & outdated standards of education here in the Philippines. I hope you will soon have a mini-series for Schematic & Boardview-free Voltage/Power Rail Tracing[12V/18-20V Main Voltage Rail, 5V, 3.3V, CPU/GPU Core Voltage Rail, DRAM Voltage Rail, IGPU Voltage Rail, System Agent/Northbridge Voltage Rail, PCH Voltage Rail, BIOS Voltage Rail, Battery Power Rail], Proper method of testing/checking of potentially faulty MOSFETs & ICs/Controller Chips, CPU/GPU/PCH Reballing and BIOS Bin File Editing. Now, I also want a tutorial video for setting up & configuration of RAID Setups.

[@laboratorioassembler]

No words about the upside down cpu fan?

[@JohanlastZa]

I like to checkout other techs working on faults. I first cleanout the device. Then I reset BIOS, check/replace battery depending on age of machine, check HDD. remove all connections and then reconnect. Check CPU paste. After all that is done, I then power on the device.

[@Adamant_IT]

I always advise reproducing the fault first. Sure, do a Visual inspection, make sure there's nothing screamingly out of place, but then power it on. If you go through all your steps first and then it works, you have no idea if it was a No Fault Found, or if something you did fixed it, and if so which of those steps fixed it. Or even worse, if the symptoms change as a result of your steps. For example, I started this video with a No POST after the customer told me it was a No Boot. I wouldn't have even known that a No POST was on the table if I'd done all the maintenance before testing it.

[@JohanlastZa]

@@Adamant_IT Of course. Depending on what is wrong. Device I worked on today - power, no display, did my steps and within 5 minutes told the customer it was not his computer but either his monitor or monitor cable. He brought his monitor and cables. He left like 30 minutes ago after I showed him it was the DVI Digital port on his monitor that was creating weird purple green effects on his computer. Already sent out quote for new monitor and also for a new SSD (current one is running at 96% health remaining). I use different fault finding methods depending the error. I have "fixed" a lot of device by just cleaning them out.

[@benqu88]

This was all really useful info, thank you.

[@dcamatrix]

Great wee video and nice to see a pc fix from yourself thanks.

[@Rfinnshw]

Thank you for another helpful video.👏👍

[@1000mjf]

Learnt a few things watching your video thanks

[@Tapsnapper]

I'm pretty certain that if you had examined the boot drive to determine if it was MBR or GPT partitioned, MBR would have to be legacy boot.

[@MsLesleyAnn1]

Thanks for this, I have a dell 3060mini that insisted raid mode in bios. I did what you did and now it boots in AHCI mode

[@gravedigga71]

Excellent title. 👌

[@SproutyPottedPlant]

Great video and great tip! Now I know next time my mum’s old Lenovo spontaneously decides it wants legacy boot I will know what to do to bring it back to UEFI booting 😊👍 I wonder if the quick power on of a Dell is for it to decide if it’s a computer or not 😅

[@Sergiu_K]

Take a drink every time Graham says "so" 😆

[@jojo0420]

Great start to a new series!

[@malcolmduncan3047]

I saw what you did with the title name... I truly did laugh out loud... I really enjoy clever wit.

[@MrSamadolfo]

😃 yay No Post Desktops FTW, thanks for the refresher on the ram sticks and the Pill Battery, its best to buy those pills in bulk cause most retail stores charge way too much just for a single pill.

[@Madpegasusmax]

It's was been a while I didn't see a dell precision of this generation. I had a few with the cr2032 lower that 3V , and lost the bios and RAID config ... other times

[@vaidkun]

there is easy conversion from legacy mbr to gpt system to boot in uefi in windows 10 with simple command so you can convert your legacy install to uefi boot without losing your data. (backup still recommended as with any intrusive disk operation)

[@mqcapps]

learned A LOT!!!!

[@sokoloft3]

optiplex 7010 I setup for someone keeps having some weird no post symptoms. Diagnostic codes where pointless and just says to "replace board" lol. Something to do with humidity, board swells up and something shorts out or doesn't make contact right.

[@Arachnoid_of_the_underverse]

Given the log facility it might be worth peeking in there to see if anything abnormal is highlighted.

[@coladict]

Also Legacy boot is a must if you're using dual-boot for Windows and Linux. If you install a Linux it deletes the Windows entry from the UEFI. If you install Windows, it deletes all other entries. The only way to have both is Legacy boot with GRUB. systemd-boot can eat my ass.

[@LeadFarmer813]

2013 desktop ram order is A1>B1 if only 2 sticks.. newer 6gen+ or so uses A2>B2. neat inaccessible boot device tip!

[@MarkusHobelsberger]

As a Linux user I'm kinda impressed by the self-repair capabilities of Windows you've shown in this video. Good to know for PCs at work ;) -written from my 12 year old PC running 4 RAM sticks with Legacy boot.

[@Adamant_IT]

Yea, Win 10 is actually very hardy. A boot drive can be swapped between PCs and won't bat an eye lid, it'll just start up. No previous version (maybe 8, but no one cares about 8) could do this unless the stars aligned. And if there's driver issues like the AHCI one I demonstrated, a safe boot will straighten most things out.

[@fr33zer94]

i love these vids keep doing them

[@NoodlesTBograt]

I have one of these with the xeon equivalent to an i7 2600 & a RX 570 8gb still works well for lower spec games

[@VOLTRONDEFENDER4440]

I have a dell optiplex 7060 with originally 8gb single channel ram but I had since purchased another 8gb stick and the stock ram was already in slot 2 so I put the new ram stick in slot 4😊

[@Jacko_486]

Keep these videos coming.

[@peterwedge6550]

I noticed the boot sequence changed before and after switching legacy off/on. Did you change it or did the bios change it on a reboot?

[@Adamant_IT]

It probably got shuffled from switching legacy off/on. Boot order isn't super important in this context, because there's only one place it _can_ boot from. Although it's not unusual to see systems where there's an SSD with windows on it, and the hard drive also has an old or botched install on it that suddenly comes back to cause issues... so yea worth keeping in mind.

[@peterwedge6550]

@@Adamant_IT Good tip regarding the battery! My office pc has a boot drive with a seperate data drive. Every now and then (usually after a power cut) the bios changes the boot order so tries to boot from the data drive and thats when I get the flashing cursor. Changing the boot order fixes it or F12 to select the boot drive. Changing the battery will hopefully sort that out :)

[@giornikitop5373]

@@Adamant_IT boot order kind of does matter in legacy mode, since hard drives might have residual data in their first sector, so no boot/or flashing cursor etc. they don;t need to have a windows install for it to happen. also, incorrect partitioning can cause that.

[@Eblackadder1982]

Actually useful. Computers would encounter a lot less problems if they reported the CMOS battery voltage level. 0.6v, yeah that's an indefinite bios reset right there.

[@patricksewell2010]

Such precise and spot-on diagnostics! Incredible work! Just curios though if there is a reason that you would not perform a BIOS update ( this was on like A07 which sounds original since most Dells of that era made it to the A20's) and also just wondering if there is also a reason you would not convert the Legacy Win install to UEFI since it only takes a matter of minutes with the MBR2GPT utility? I have just got into the habbit on these older Dells of always doing BIOS update and convert to UEFI since it only takes an extra 5 minutes total and greatly improves compatibility and performance, especially with Windows 10... Just curious😃

[@Adamant_IT]

I tend not to change setups unless I'm doing additional work with them. If windows had been scrambled and I was going to re-image it or clean install, I'd go to the trouble of updating everything. But in this instance, it's working, leave it alone. I've had instances with older machines where you start updating things, and then something changes or breaks, and you spend the rest of the day swearing at it and thinking "It was fine. It was working. It was finished. Why did I start meddling? I can't charge for any of this because none of it has anything to do with what the system came in for..."

[@patricksewell2010]

@@Adamant_IT Thanks so much for the thoughtful and detailed reply! I definitely understand where you are coming from. I guess I just instinctively have PTSD after working on so many OptiPlex 9020 SFF machines that were so commonly found in hospitals, schools, law firms, etc that had the issue with the worst power supplies Dell ever manufactured and they turned into ticking time bombs if you left them on the earlier BIOS revs (A00-A03) and the PSU was on its way out, the combination was nuclear and the BIOS would eventually just go kaboom to the point where the machine would become nothing more than an office ornament, lol... I remember decommissioning an entire fleet of them for a law firm once and out of 25+, all but a handful had already gone nuclear to the point of no POST and the 4 or 5 that were left were all on original BIOS and I upgraded them all (I believe to A18 or A19 at the time, we are talking 13ish years ago...) and there all still running strong, with the exception of one of them which the power supply finally went out and all I had to do was order an upgraded power supply and slapped it in and it still worked fine even after being powered on the failing power supply which was the previous cause of the BIOS losing its brain cells, but because I had made it in time with the bias upgrade to the latest version, it definitely saved those BIOS chips from imminent destruction! Yes that's why if I see any Dell at boot up touting a bios revision in the A0x range, my PTSD kicks in and I am compelled to upgrade the BIOS to the latest version, but I guess this does only apply to Dell workstations from that era as I have not seen that particular issue with the 9020 SFF on any other mobo/PSU combo. But over the years I've definitely been able to save quite a few of those 9020 SFFs from the landfill by just doing a simple BIOS update. As for changing from legacy/mbr to UEFI/gpt, I guess I've also formed a habit and so far I guess I've just been really lucky because I have not had The conversion utility in Windows or the switching in BIOS ever cause any major issues. I guess I just made a habit out of it because in my opinion, Windows 10 performance is extremely degraded when a system is in legacy mode as you're introducing another layer for the operating system to route commands in and out of, whereas of course in UEFI, the system is able to just directly communicate with all the controllers and IO on the mobo... I think maybe my obsession is that anytime I see a Windows 10 system booting with the Windows logo instead of whatever the OEM manufacturer or mobo manufacturer's logo is, I guess it just sets me off because I know it's not right in my heart and I know that the fix only takes a matter of minutes, so if I leave it in legacy and don't switch to UEFI, every time I reboot the machine I just get more fueled when I see the Windows animated logo again at startup, lol... I always make sure that I do extensive research to confirm that the mobo for sure supports UEFI before I go down that road, lol...But I guess it's just a matter of myself ending up in your shoes where I'm doing a "simple" conversion from legacy to UEFI and things go south for no reason and then I would probably end up on your bandwagon of the more or less "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" mentality....🤦‍♂️😉

[@safn1949]

I was running a HP Z230 and an HP 800 G1, the E3-1200 series Xeons are pretty good, the E5 xeons are not good for gaming as they tend to be low clock speeds, I had the E3-1246 V3 that is Haswell 4 core 8 thread 3.5 to 3.9ghz. with igpu. That probably has something like a X series or W3500 Xeon. I got too much time on my hands.

[@davidlguerr]

When you removed the drive to copy files, you should have checked if the SSD's partition type was MBR or UEFI in the first place...

[@justinspiredfallout]

Nice. But what about the upside down CPU fan? :D

[@Adamant_IT]

Common setup in Dells. Sometimes there's cowling that directs the exhaust air out of the case, might've been removed on this PC. It doesn't really matter which direction the air flows over the heatsink, as long as there is airflow.

[@andymawby52]

Please tell me you turned the cpu fan over so it was correct. That was bugging me the whole vid :P

[@micflynn1]

A 4 PAK of Energizers 2032 cost me $5 US..... But I bet they last longer than most of the Cheaper ones!

[@gandalf5895]

Damn, I've been in the industry for nearly 5 years and I didn't know safe mode boot will reset the boot driver! #themoreyouknow

[@QuentinStephens]

Great video for the basics. Just one nitpick: when you took the SSD for backing up (always a good idea) you mentioned that if you could read it it would be okay. SSDs are supposed to fail in a safe manner to a read-only mode, so being able to read a SSD doesn't necessarily mean that it's working properly. Later on, in the BIOS you also had the opportunity of checking the SMART data, so I hope you checked the health of the SSD with a view to the possible sale of a replacement drive. Keep up the good work.

[@gorjy9610]

Maybe they supposed to fail in read only mode but with these cheap drives you'll usually find them just dead.

[@procta2343]

when CMOS batteries go, they really do cause trouble!

[@JimmyBagOfDonuts]

Good video.

[@Run187]

OK it's a dell, we are gonna have a problem. Also after you turn it pc, press the power button to drain the remaining power .I know its not a lot, bit it's a dell..

[@chrisamon5762]

Good episode

[@jhat2014]

I'm not going to watch the video because I don't have time. But I'll leave a like because of the awesome video title! ;)

[@Tim_Small]

Steer clear of the £1 cr2023 packs, they're all crap. Pay a little more for a genuine GP pack or similar, but not from eBay or Amazon (where most are counterfeit).

[@hypotheticallywhatiskyle]

As soon as I saw that pesky dell invalid time and date config screen I new the cmos battery was a culprit

[@giornikitop5373]

the raid-on bios option does not mean that you must have the drives in raid. it's a bit of a hussle because you have to install the necessary drivers (but 99% is the usuall intel storage one, which includes both raid and ahci), but it's better to have that on, since it's the bios default. these dells like to randomly loose their shit and fall back to it.

[@simmo1024]

Found the best policy with Dell Bios' is to do a reset (especially when re-imaging), even if it doesn't need it; sometimes they just go off on their own and do something stupid. I've got to the point where I don't even bother looking further in the bios unless I have to. Horrible clunky, ugly things on Dell computers.

[@waize]

i am kinda upset you didnt put the cpu fan the right way.

[@DodgyFPV]

Nice play on words there

[@Run187]

I'm shacking after seeing a dell bios ..

[@elminster8149]

You should do a compilation of your 30 second fixes. Can be useful for the newbies. :)

[@MarkusHobelsberger]

Get ready for the RAM re-seating montage :D

[@WayStedYou]

Probably good content for shorts beside the aspect ratio

[@Chriva]

Wanna extent AHCI slightly. While it is the native mode and definitely the fastest for non-raid mode it's rarely the most compatible if you have any intentions whatsoever to run older operating system. XP won't install without baked-in or drivers on floppy. Vista and Seven is entirely dependant on the age of the chipset. Is it newer than the OS itself it's likely not going to work.

[@Adamant_IT]

Even if you're running a retro system, you should install AHCI drivers. Running a SATA controller in ATA mode murders the performance from lack of native command queuing alone. In any case, I'm advising for modern systems in these videos anyway... retro is outside the scope of this channel as there's a lot of 'if this then that' around it.

[@Aygross]

Dell defaults to raid and needs to be there if the install was done while it was in raid mode even if the drives arent actually raided.

[@ianhaylock7409]

14:53 Cut towards your chum, not your thumb.

[@FredTheLard]

Always worth saving bios before you make a change, that is if the bios supports that. Also latest bios is A21

[@JacobScharmberg]

But... it's not Sunday

[@Syntappi]

"no need to run legacy unless you're running a 12 year old computer" Meanwhile the T1600 is already 13 years old 😃 Jokes aside, i run UEFI always if possible.

[@namemenick]

i love the dyi cpu cooler that has a fan upside down lol.

[@AndyM...]

I was just starting to type in the comments, just before the video ended, I wonder if he's checked the BIOS battery...then whala !!! Nice job Graham ! 😎

[@GalileudoLinux]

Irmão ! Excelente vídeo ... Por que não utilizas luvas antiestáticas ? Atenciosamente, GalileudoLinux.

[@LeadFarmer813]

static killing ram is rare.. there is videos w ESD gun testing.

[@Jacko_486]

The UK has high humidity, 83% today (because Manchester). With high humidity there's virtually no chance of static build-up.

[@GalileudoLinux]

@@LeadFarmer813 Thank you my friend !

[@GalileudoLinux]

@@Jacko_486 Thank you my friend !

[@iamperplexed4695]

Why the he'll should I not be using a computer more than 12 years old? What kind if comment is that?

[@Adamant_IT]

Running an old computer is like running an old car. Does it work? Absolutely. However, it doesn't have software support (other than what works by coincidence), it doesn't have spare parts support (other than what's already on the market) and the parts already in there are aging and could fail at any moment. If you know this and are happy to maintain it, cool, go for it. But would you recommend to a customer that they should run the same system? No... absolutely not.

[@iamperplexed4695]

@Adamant_IT As someone who did what you do (although a different era), yes, I encouraged people to keep machines as long as possible. I believe it's a question of viability and not age. If the machine is still viable for its use case then keep it as many years as possible. The fact is that the technology you bought 10 years ago is going to be better made and last longer than anything you buy now or into the future. Planned obsolescence is built into this market to keep money flowing to manufacturers but that doesn't mean you need to give into it as a rule of thumb.

[@Aygross]

su630 are such crap they always die we have had that and 650 all come back dead after a couple of years.

[@hosamajram1164]

I think its workstation pc , not for gaming , with cpu xeon , ram eec .....