Thanks for this video. I had a Dell with a very similar problem. Took it to a computer repair store, and was told I had a bad hard drive. I needed to recover a couple of documents, so I brought it back home, and was attempting to remove the hard drive to send it off to a data recovery company. I got stuck trying to remove the floppy drive, and was looking for a video on teardown of this unit, when I ran across this video. I just re-made all the memory connections, and the computer is alive. Total cost of repair $0. It took more time to drive to and from the computer store than it took for the actual repair.
I had a GX520, found it in the trash. It was in terrible shape since it looked like it had been out in the rain for a long time. There was dirt all over the thing with water marks on it. I decided to make it shine. Surprisingly it booted without exploding, all the way to Windows 7. The hard drive kept slowing down leading me to think It was soon to crash. It did crash. Then a year later the motherboard died. I never liked this machine, the motherboard was missing features and it wasn't the best. I ordered a 755, it looked like an identical computer, right down to the motherboard. I took out the Core 2 Duo inside of it, and put a Core 2 Quad Q6600 inside. Got it a AMD Radeon HD 2400 Pro, with the infamous DMS-59 connector. It is still in use today, and is one of my main machines
I have a few videos posted on repairing the capacitors in these. The 745 and 755 sff were also prone to having bad capacitors. The hot running Pentium D models were the worst.
My 755 has bad caps but it still works for now. The PSU always got hot and i had to install speedfan and bump up its fan to 60% just to keep it from getting hot. I retired it in June 2021.
Indeed, it's a huge waste. Many of these computers can be fixed by something as simple as cleaning the dust out, and are very useful. It confuses me people don't even bother to take a peek inside their broken computers.
I own one of these machines as well. Mine is equipped with a Pentium D & 2GB of ram. Absolutely has been the most reliable & tough machine i have ever owned. Mine has been suffering as well with the burst caps for the past 4 years. I run speed fan and have the program "force fan's to high speed" 24-7. as you well know these machines are heat challenged! Good buy!
My first computer was a Dell Optiplex GX520, which I still own. It's been my guinea pig for years and I learned everything on it. xD I ended up collecting Optiplex's.
Dang, that one;s nicer than my minitower GX620. Mine's just currently sitting idle until I remember to upgrade it to a Pentium D and throw in a hard drive.
I never understood Dell's decision in putting the big 3.5" hard disk drives in these SFF desktops. A 5400RPM 2.5" drive would've given a wealth of airflow to the machine and probably negated any bloated capacitor problems.
Bill, have you ever made a video of you changing a capacitor on a MB? I would like to see how delicate / difficult it is to fix those on a MB. I have only use soldering gun to repair stereo jacks.
Fun Fact: Dell removed the diag lights on OptiPlex 7020's. We use the 7 series Desktops at my work (745, 760, 780 - All retired, then 790, 7010, and 7020) Kind of disappointed as I've gotten some 7020's new out of the box dead, be nice to see what error codes it is throwing but nothing.
I noticed that, we have a small group of i7 OptiPlex 5040's and I noticed they don't have any. Honestly, the easy maintenance of the OptiPlex was one of it's best attributes. They could have done what was done on the pre-BTX OptiPlex and include the indicator lights on the back! Absolutely awful decision of removing them!
(I do wish YT would extend the character limit in comments) Anyway while I was looking in his PC it was choked with dust. The vents on the PSU that died were clogged thick with dust restricting air flow to well, probably zero. My theory is it was that that caused the PSU to fail. I think lessons should be given on basic PC servicing such as renewing thermal paste and dusting it out periodically to prolong your PC's life.
To anybody who owns one of these dell small form factor towers I highly recommend turning the fan around so it blows air out of the front so it does not cook the caps which are directly behind the heat sink. When it blows out the front it draws cool air in the system and the hot air immediately exits. I have got 7 of these from a thriftstore for $5 each due to no powering on that were ditched there by WHIO TV.
It took me a few minutes to figure out that video connector and find some place to order one. I did find that if you pull the video card, you can use the on board video. I think you mentioned that. Tom
I just found one of these on the side of the street! The disk drive is floppy and it's out of place. I try to repair it once I get my compressor running!
I've never seen or heard this before. Usually when there's a problem the power LED turns orange and you get the beep codes. My Optiplex 755 i retired would do that every once in a while. Reseating the RAM fixed it. The bad caps in the PSU don't seem it be a problem when i was still using it daily.
These are good machines. I used one for awhile as a HTPC. Put a Radeon 6450 low profile video card, and a P4-D 3.4GHz in the machine The only mod I made was turning the CPU fan around to blow out the front, as I found the hard drive mounted directly behind the blow torch cpu was getting cooked to death.
That is why I ditched this computer in favor of the 745 you mention. Although it made for an excellent hand warmer in the winter :) I've found only the fastest P4 furnaces can do what I needed for a HTPC. I tried to put a Core 2 Duo in the little 620 but that motherboard just said "hell no!" I think the 620 would make an excellent NAS ( with a USB HD for backups if you needed) or Pfsense firewall box.
I have yet to see an OptiPlex system of this case style (including the BTX style case) with bad capacitors, have you seen many? I have been lucky enough to see a few bad motherboards particularly the GX520 model. I also had a bad power supply in a SFF unit too. But having a GX620 with a P4 @3.4 GHZ and 2GB of RAM, I have found it to be very useful system. Running Windows XP flawlessly.
Long time no view, uxwbill. :) I have a GX520 larger desktop form factor with a Cedar Mill Pentium 4 and it has worked beautifully for the past several years 24/7. No bad capacitors in this one. I have only had one Dell with bad caps and that was an Optiplex GX280 SFF with a Prescott Pentium 4.
Very informative video. I get these Dells all the time for free and love to get them working again. Usually something simple. I suspect the owners take them to a repair shop which wants to charge them more than a new computer so they buy a new one.I then give the repaired computers away to people who can't afford them. Tom
I've inherited what I think is a GX620, but its a bit smaller than this, its got a laptop style multibay for the DVD drive, I think it uses the same optical drive assembly as a laptop of the same era. It also has an external power supply about 4-6 times the size of the power brick on my MacBook. Its got a Pentium of some sort I believe a 2.8 I'm at work right now and its at home, otherwise I'd be able to be more certain on the specs... But I do know its 64 bit capable hardware, but its running a regular 32 bit XP copy. I have a copy of Vista Ultimate that I bought for $30 that I want to use on it, I want to try and install the 64 bit version as well. Maybe I should make a video about all of this. It had a dead clock battery when I first started trying to get into it, and the CD drive wouldn't boot. I'm thinking the dead clock battery in it was causing some of this drama, I hope anyway.
I did some more playing last night, first thing was to check, it is indeed a GX620, I guess I figured the different sized machines would have different models numbers. Oh well, lol. Anyhow, it has a 2.8 GHz Pentium D, I'm not sure if its a true dual core CPU or not, I haven't got that far into it yet. I did have a good look at the capacitors the first time I opened it up, mostly due to its bad behavior and vintage I figured it may have that problem, but I didn't see any that looked suspect, and I'm going to look again more closely tonight. I decided for best protection of the data on the drive that it had in it, I'm going to buy another drive on the way home (we have a Microcenter store that has 160GB drives for $12) to put in it and install Vista onto, and then thoroughly pick the the drive clean of all the data that I want to save via a USB external enclosure. I'm stuck going about it that way because I don't know the password on the user account, and the only user account is the administrator. I tried all the least intrusive ways around it, and even tried some method using the XP install disk. I screwed up the OS installation though, but I'm not too upset, my only interest in getting logged in was to find and back everything up before installing Vista. I thought about staying with XP on it, but remembering that XP is officially obsolete now was the final nail to that coffin. Plus, although it may be all in my head, but in comparing it seems that 64 bit can at times feel faster. I don't know if its just he way it handles RAM or if it has any effect on the CPU being more utilized or not. Plus it seems by the hardware specs that it should run Vista quite well, esp. if it is a dual core. It has 1GB of RAM in it now, I probably will upgrade it to whatever the max is, I believe that is 4GB, but I'm going to check and see if more can be used successfully, I know on my 2009 MacBook (same as your white one) the max RAM is supposed to be 4, but I have had 8GB in t for over a year now, both Vista Ultimate 64bit (Bootcamp) and OS 10.10 both recognize and use all of it.
I think I forgot to also say that after replacing the battery the optical drive is working correctly. Before it wouldn't do anything, the BIOS wouldn't let me boot from it either, and in the boot order menu it claimed the bay to be empty, I thought the battery might fix it, or at least hoped, and it did. My BF (this was his computer, sadly on 3/19/15 congenital heart failure stole the love of my life from me, he was only 22) said a while back that some of the USB ports didn't work all the time, he knew about the DVD drive too, he also knew the battery was dead too. He didn't use it much, and once he moved in with me he didn't even unpack or set it up, he used his iPhone for almost everything, or my Mac Mini or Macbook when he needed a computer. His family gave me all of his electronics (game consoles such as his xbox and Wii, 3D TV and BluRay player, phone, MP3 players etc, etc...) including this computer. His dad thought I should just take the hard dive out and scrap it, as a computer from 2006 is too old and slow to be worth using. I just don't consider a computer with a 2.8GHz dual core 64bit CPU to be all that slow or useless, it even has a DVI port instead of VGA for the video out.
I've always thought it was interesting how sometimes to move forward you have to go back. I believe it was the heat the P4 created that caused its architecture to be dumped, I was told the reason they went back to the P3 and started again from there but I can't remember the whole story. I'm actually waiting for Vista to install right now, I picked up a used 160GB WD drive that just happened to have come from some other Dell desktop, as its Dell branded, and I have the original 80GB drive in a USB enclosure waiting to be read. But so far from playing around with the computer it seems like it should handle this OS well. I don't expect it to run as fast as say my MacBook with the same version of Vista installed with Bootcamp, but I don't think I'll find it all that slow.
+uxwbill Something common I used to see with the GX260 (yes 260, not 620) is a complete POST failure. You'd get fans running but no post, no beeps, nada. 2 or 3 I dealt with at the time had board replacements which fixed the issue. It turned out the solution was far simpler. Remove and reinstall the clock battery. Since that time I'm sure I've fixed far more myself. I don't recall seeing it in any other Optiplex systems, but I may have seen it in the related Dimension system, and I did see it in a Dell inspiron laptop before. My employer at the time was a facility that had a decent amount of military people that worked there as well as civilians. A Lt.Colonel that worked there asked if I could look at her personal laptop because it was sent to Dell and they said it was irreparable outside of a $450 motherboard replacement (for the $600 laptop). I said sure and took it home. I stripped it down to it's base componentry with no luck and was then reminded of the GX260 cmos battery issue. It fixed it immediately. She was so happy that I got it working that she insisted on paying me something. I asked what Dell charged her to look at it and she said $150. I didn't charge near that amount. I said if she liked I could write up a professional looking invoice that she could use as some leverage in getting her money back from Dell and she said yes, definitely. I never found out if she did, but it just shows that a glitch in the CMOS can really make things look bad.
just got a Dell Optiplex gx620 SSF from the trash specs are pentium 4 HT running at 3.2ghz it's got an 80gig HD running windows XP pro SP3 it also has 4gigs of RAM works good so far i will be using it for music and DVD playback :D
Hello i do have the same system... When i on the system on but no display.... I tried unplugging ram, hdd, dvd drives.. checked all cables. Green on light is also showing... But no display coming... I even tried to add a new display but not worked.. can provide me a solution... Thanks
I recently bought a couple of Dell Optiplex GX620 computers (scuffed side panels as usual) and when I received them, I found that neither one would recognize the 2GB of installed memory when booting up, showing only 256MG! I did get it to recognize the memory once the operating system cranked up, any idea as to the remedy?
Look out for PSU fan failures on these OptiPlex GX520/620. If you get flashing orange power LED after some time of use then check there first. Replaced 64 of those PSUs in one go once because they were dropping like flies so Dell sent new PSUs for all of them.
It's always a good idea to periodically dust out a computer. A friend of mine had his PC fail. He told me over FB that it puffed out some smoke from the back and died then wouldn't turn on. I said over FB it sounds like the PSU failed. So I go over to his place to have a look, took one sniff of the PSU and confirmed my diagnosis. We then went to a computer shop and bought a replacement PSU, came home and fitted it to his PC and bobs ya uncle.
I work on these every day. They all are very frigidity with their memory sockets. We have a few hundred where I work. Some Pentium Ds, Core 2 Duos, and i7s. They are all full towers, different models, but share the same style case.
Hey uxwbill, i just got one of these a couple of days ago, however mine has a graphics card with the dms59 connector and it has no fan just a black heatsink. Sadly i have no sata drive to install windows, but i am guessing its an ati card?
These machines really rock i do not know how many i recapped and one of them i use as my htpc now only thing i dislike is the cpu fan lol it is way to loud :) Wonder if you can fool it to believe it is still have have the same cooling and put water cooling? :) I also tried without luck to upgrade it with a few extra sata ports i even added the small 10nF caps but maybe it been disable in bios? :)
I have an optiplex 745 that does basically the same thing but the so called "Growl" seems to beep on and off. No idea what's wrong, no memory in it either. The thing is, I would think it would give a normal beep code, not that low droan in incremental beeps.
***** Yeah, I'm aware of that. Just an update, after I posted this comment I took some memory out of another computer and put it in. It turned on and booted to a live USB stick with linux, but yeah, the groaning in the psu continues. I've been told it has something to do with the copper coil inside the psu compressing and decompressing.
I had an Austin computer running Windows 98 and when I overloaded the memory, it kept beeping loudly for 10-20 seconds before coming up with a RAM error on screen. I thought the Optiplex series were all post-Pentium 4's.
Awesome! My aunt gave me one for free and I love it, just one thing power supply went bad on me, replaced it, hard drive was bad after that (Note it worked for months before with no trouble) so I discovered it had a spare hard drive, and now when i went to reinstall windows I discovered it wasnt detecting one of my ram sticks and soon discovered it is bad :(.
can u plz tell me my optiplex is not starting? when I turn it on it give me no display and it power button light turn orange kindly suggest me what can I do??
orange/amber light usually indicates that there is a cpu/ram problem, so try reseating your ram checking caps or even reseat your cpu etc and also does the computer beep and or does the fan run loud?
Can you help me I have same Pc but when i turn i on it makes srange ongoing noise non stop for like 2 mins or so and then it stops the fan is on and i have orange light on the front...And the test inducator when I turn it on just on sec is on number 4.I dont know whats the problem...Can you help me?
Erratic behavior like this is often a sign of a failed power supply. The orange LED also indicates a possible power supply failure, faulty expansion card, bad CPU or a system that can't even begin to start. Inspect the computer's motherboard thoroughly for capacitors (cylinder shapes) whose tops have exploded or leaked. Any of those may also cause the problem and would have to be replaced for reliable operation.
Bad memory connections, what a laugh lol :-) I tend to slide a bit of cardboard in to the slots to clean them, its slightly abrasive and clears any muck, what a great use for cerial packets :-))
I too used to buy cans of air and it's way too expensive for what it is. Plus if you tilt the bottle liquid burst out. I clean mine and my brother pc every 4-5 months with my 8 gal air compressor. It take about 4 gal of air per pc when you greatly abuse of it. I paid 240$ for it and it will last me many years. If money is an issue you can still buy a 100$ 2gal one, some don't use any oil for the motor, and will work way better than air cans.
i would agree an oil less air compressor are great for inside the computer chassis. especially when you see these little dust bunnies or the moustaches on the front grill. either size will do.
I need to see exactly what u did. U cut the cleaning part out of the video. I have the exact same computer doing the exact same thing. Growling no video no boot ugh.
Odds are I clearly explained what I did. Maybe I even threw it in the dishwasher, which is a very effective way to clean dirty boards. And I do have a video about that, which you can watch. Remove the battery from the motherboard and give it a minimum of a week in fairly direct sunlight to dry out. Do NOT rush this.
uxwbill Still can't believe that works, dishwasher pc cleaning. I found a RUclips video showing someone hand washing a disassembled laptop someone slipped soda all over, it surprisingly came back to life.
sub-d style thumbscrew fasteners only damage boards beyond repair... A damaged connector I can replace, a chunk of multi layered PCB I can not.. Not that I would ever bother fixing junk like this though.
found one of these babys in the trash, had a bad psu so i custom fit some other sff psu into it :) also threw a pentium d 3.4 and 4gb ddr2 in it :D runs hotter than hell tho :(
Thanks for this video. I had a Dell with a very similar problem. Took it to a computer repair store, and was told I had a bad hard drive. I needed to recover a couple of documents, so I brought it back home, and was attempting to remove the hard drive to send it off to a data recovery company. I got stuck trying to remove the floppy drive, and was looking for a video on teardown of this unit, when I ran across this video. I just re-made all the memory connections, and the computer is alive. Total cost of repair $0. It took more time to drive to and from the computer store than it took for the actual repair.
I had a GX520, found it in the trash. It was in terrible shape since it looked like it had been out in the rain for a long time. There was dirt all over the thing with water marks on it. I decided to make it shine. Surprisingly it booted without exploding, all the way to Windows 7. The hard drive kept slowing down leading me to think It was soon to crash. It did crash.
Then a year later the motherboard died. I never liked this machine, the motherboard was missing features and it wasn't the best. I ordered a 755, it looked like an identical computer, right down to the motherboard. I took out the Core 2 Duo inside of it, and put a Core 2 Quad Q6600 inside. Got it a AMD Radeon HD 2400 Pro, with the infamous DMS-59 connector. It is still in use today, and is one of my main machines
I have a few videos posted on repairing the capacitors in these. The 745 and 755 sff were also prone to having bad capacitors. The hot running Pentium D models were the worst.
My 755 has bad caps but it still works for now. The PSU always got hot and i had to install speedfan and bump up its fan to 60% just to keep it from getting hot. I retired it in June 2021.
I hate how people throw out computers like these when the solution is so simple.
I second that, especially when our friendly man, uxwbill, takes a little time to troubleshoot and solve the problems.
Indeed, it's a huge waste. Many of these computers can be fixed by something as simple as cleaning the dust out, and are very useful. It confuses me people don't even bother to take a peek inside their broken computers.
I own one of these machines as well. Mine is equipped with a Pentium D & 2GB of ram. Absolutely has been the most reliable & tough machine i have ever owned. Mine has been suffering as well with the burst caps for the past 4 years. I run speed fan and have the program "force fan's to high speed" 24-7. as you well know these machines are heat challenged! Good buy!
My first computer was a Dell Optiplex GX520, which I still own. It's been my guinea pig for years and I learned everything on it. xD
I ended up collecting Optiplex's.
Excellent video well presented and informative. Thanks for posting
Dang, that one;s nicer than my minitower GX620. Mine's just currently sitting idle until I remember to upgrade it to a Pentium D and throw in a hard drive.
I never understood Dell's decision in putting the big 3.5" hard disk drives in these SFF desktops. A 5400RPM 2.5" drive would've given a wealth of airflow to the machine and probably negated any bloated capacitor problems.
Bill, have you ever made a video of you changing a capacitor on a MB? I would like to see how delicate / difficult it is to fix those on a MB. I have only use soldering gun to repair stereo jacks.
Fun Fact: Dell removed the diag lights on OptiPlex 7020's. We use the 7 series Desktops at my work (745, 760, 780 - All retired, then 790, 7010, and 7020) Kind of disappointed as I've gotten some 7020's new out of the box dead, be nice to see what error codes it is throwing but nothing.
I noticed that, we have a small group of i7 OptiPlex 5040's and I noticed they don't have any. Honestly, the easy maintenance of the OptiPlex was one of it's best attributes. They could have done what was done on the pre-BTX OptiPlex and include the indicator lights on the back! Absolutely awful decision of removing them!
(I do wish YT would extend the character limit in comments) Anyway while I was looking in his PC it was choked with dust. The vents on the PSU that died were clogged thick with dust restricting air flow to well, probably zero. My theory is it was that that caused the PSU to fail.
I think lessons should be given on basic PC servicing such as renewing thermal paste and dusting it out periodically to prolong your PC's life.
To anybody who owns one of these dell small form factor towers I highly recommend turning the fan around so it blows air out of the front so it does not cook the caps which are directly behind the heat sink. When it blows out the front it draws cool air in the system and the hot air immediately exits. I have got 7 of these from a thriftstore for $5 each due to no powering on that were ditched there by WHIO TV.
It took me a few minutes to figure out that video connector and find some place to order one. I did find that if you pull the video card, you can use the on board video. I think you mentioned that.
Tom
I just found one of these on the side of the street! The disk drive is floppy and it's out of place. I try to repair it once I get my compressor running!
good clean machine and not a problem to recap, and all for $5 as well, you did well there young Bill.
I've never seen or heard this before. Usually when there's a problem the power LED turns orange and you get the beep codes. My Optiplex 755 i retired would do that every once in a while. Reseating the RAM fixed it. The bad caps in the PSU don't seem it be a problem when i was still using it daily.
These are good machines. I used one for awhile as a HTPC. Put a Radeon 6450 low profile video card, and a P4-D 3.4GHz in the machine The only mod I made was turning the CPU fan around to blow out the front, as I found the hard drive mounted directly behind the blow torch cpu was getting cooked to death.
That is why I ditched this computer in favor of the 745 you mention. Although it made for an excellent hand warmer in the winter :) I've found only the fastest P4 furnaces can do what I needed for a HTPC. I tried to put a Core 2 Duo in the little 620 but that motherboard just said "hell no!" I think the 620 would make an excellent NAS ( with a USB HD for backups if you needed) or Pfsense firewall box.
I have yet to see an OptiPlex system of this case style (including the BTX style case) with bad capacitors, have you seen many? I have been lucky enough to see a few bad motherboards particularly the GX520 model. I also had a bad power supply in a SFF unit too. But having a GX620 with a P4 @3.4 GHZ and 2GB of RAM, I have found it to be very useful system. Running Windows XP flawlessly.
bill i do suggest getting them caps replaced though and make this dell run like a champ
Good Tip. I have couple of Acers that will not start. I will buy some compressed air, and see if that does the trick
I have one and yea its the ram I had to push it in since they were not pushed in right
I guess we could find out if that's a pentium 4 by measuring how much the room temperature rises :P
Polaris Lakewell Have a pentium D myself, a 3.4ghz model( don't know if it's the 945 or 950 model) yea they do a great job as a space heater lol.
Thanks Bill, I will be sure to delve into the Setup Utility...
That growling noise reminds me of old gymnasium lights.
Sounds good, keep us posted. Thanks.
Long time no view, uxwbill. :) I have a GX520 larger desktop form factor with a Cedar Mill Pentium 4 and it has worked beautifully for the past several years 24/7. No bad capacitors in this one. I have only had one Dell with bad caps and that was an Optiplex GX280 SFF with a Prescott Pentium 4.
Very informative video. I get these Dells all the time for free and love to get them working again. Usually something simple. I suspect the owners take them to a repair shop which wants to charge them more than a new computer so they buy a new one.I then give the repaired computers away to people who can't afford them.
Tom
Just had my ingrown toenail removed, it hurts like hell, but now i have this so it's all good!
I've inherited what I think is a GX620, but its a bit smaller than this, its got a laptop style multibay for the DVD drive, I think it uses the same optical drive assembly as a laptop of the same era. It also has an external power supply about 4-6 times the size of the power brick on my MacBook. Its got a Pentium of some sort I believe a 2.8 I'm at work right now and its at home, otherwise I'd be able to be more certain on the specs... But I do know its 64 bit capable hardware, but its running a regular 32 bit XP copy. I have a copy of Vista Ultimate that I bought for $30 that I want to use on it, I want to try and install the 64 bit version as well. Maybe I should make a video about all of this. It had a dead clock battery when I first started trying to get into it, and the CD drive wouldn't boot. I'm thinking the dead clock battery in it was causing some of this drama, I hope anyway.
I did some more playing last night, first thing was to check, it is indeed a GX620, I guess I figured the different sized machines would have different models numbers. Oh well, lol.
Anyhow, it has a 2.8 GHz Pentium D, I'm not sure if its a true dual core CPU or not, I haven't got that far into it yet. I did have a good look at the capacitors the first time I opened it up, mostly due to its bad behavior and vintage I figured it may have that problem, but I didn't see any that looked suspect, and I'm going to look again more closely tonight. I decided for best protection of the data on the drive that it had in it, I'm going to buy another drive on the way home (we have a Microcenter store that has 160GB drives for $12) to put in it and install Vista onto, and then thoroughly pick the the drive clean of all the data that I want to save via a USB external enclosure. I'm stuck going about it that way because I don't know the password on the user account, and the only user account is the administrator. I tried all the least intrusive ways around it, and even tried some method using the XP install disk. I screwed up the OS installation though, but I'm not too upset, my only interest in getting logged in was to find and back everything up before installing Vista. I thought about staying with XP on it, but remembering that XP is officially obsolete now was the final nail to that coffin. Plus, although it may be all in my head, but in comparing it seems that 64 bit can at times feel faster. I don't know if its just he way it handles RAM or if it has any effect on the CPU being more utilized or not. Plus it seems by the hardware specs that it should run Vista quite well, esp. if it is a dual core.
It has 1GB of RAM in it now, I probably will upgrade it to whatever the max is, I believe that is 4GB, but I'm going to check and see if more can be used successfully, I know on my 2009 MacBook (same as your white one) the max RAM is supposed to be 4, but I have had 8GB in t for over a year now, both Vista Ultimate 64bit (Bootcamp) and OS 10.10 both recognize and use all of it.
I think I forgot to also say that after replacing the battery the optical drive is working correctly. Before it wouldn't do anything, the BIOS wouldn't let me boot from it either, and in the boot order menu it claimed the bay to be empty, I thought the battery might fix it, or at least hoped, and it did. My BF (this was his computer, sadly on 3/19/15 congenital heart failure stole the love of my life from me, he was only 22) said a while back that some of the USB ports didn't work all the time, he knew about the DVD drive too, he also knew the battery was dead too. He didn't use it much, and once he moved in with me he didn't even unpack or set it up, he used his iPhone for almost everything, or my Mac Mini or Macbook when he needed a computer. His family gave me all of his electronics (game consoles such as his xbox and Wii, 3D TV and BluRay player, phone, MP3 players etc, etc...) including this computer. His dad thought I should just take the hard dive out and scrap it, as a computer from 2006 is too old and slow to be worth using. I just don't consider a computer with a 2.8GHz dual core 64bit CPU to be all that slow or useless, it even has a DVI port instead of VGA for the video out.
I've always thought it was interesting how sometimes to move forward you have to go back. I believe it was the heat the P4 created that caused its architecture to be dumped, I was told the reason they went back to the P3 and started again from there but I can't remember the whole story.
I'm actually waiting for Vista to install right now, I picked up a used 160GB WD drive that just happened to have come from some other Dell desktop, as its Dell branded, and I have the original 80GB drive in a USB enclosure waiting to be read. But so far from playing around with the computer it seems like it should handle this OS well. I don't expect it to run as fast as say my MacBook with the same version of Vista installed with Bootcamp, but I don't think I'll find it all that slow.
+uxwbill Something common I used to see with the GX260 (yes 260, not 620) is a complete POST failure. You'd get fans running but no post, no beeps, nada. 2 or 3 I dealt with at the time had board replacements which fixed the issue. It turned out the solution was far simpler. Remove and reinstall the clock battery. Since that time I'm sure I've fixed far more myself. I don't recall seeing it in any other Optiplex systems, but I may have seen it in the related Dimension system, and I did see it in a Dell inspiron laptop before. My employer at the time was a facility that had a decent amount of military people that worked there as well as civilians. A Lt.Colonel that worked there asked if I could look at her personal laptop because it was sent to Dell and they said it was irreparable outside of a $450 motherboard replacement (for the $600 laptop). I said sure and took it home. I stripped it down to it's base componentry with no luck and was then reminded of the GX260 cmos battery issue. It fixed it immediately. She was so happy that I got it working that she insisted on paying me something. I asked what Dell charged her to look at it and she said $150. I didn't charge near that amount. I said if she liked I could write up a professional looking invoice that she could use as some leverage in getting her money back from Dell and she said yes, definitely. I never found out if she did, but it just shows that a glitch in the CMOS can really make things look bad.
PS\2 to my understanding isn't designed to be hot-swappable, so I'd imagine that's why the BIOS didn't pick up the keyboard after it was plugged in
just got a Dell Optiplex gx620 SSF from the trash specs are pentium 4 HT running at 3.2ghz it's got an 80gig HD running windows XP pro SP3 it also has 4gigs of RAM works good so far i will be using it for music and DVD playback :D
Hello i do have the same system... When i on the system on but no display.... I tried unplugging ram, hdd, dvd drives.. checked all cables. Green on light is also showing... But no display coming... I even tried to add a new display but not worked.. can provide me a solution...
Thanks
I recently bought a couple of Dell Optiplex GX620 computers (scuffed side panels as usual) and when I received them, I found that neither one would recognize the 2GB of installed memory when booting up, showing only 256MG! I did get it to recognize the memory once the operating system cranked up, any idea as to the remedy?
Look out for PSU fan failures on these OptiPlex GX520/620. If you get flashing orange power LED after some time of use then check there first. Replaced 64 of those PSUs in one go once because they were dropping like flies so Dell sent new PSUs for all of them.
It's always a good idea to periodically dust out a computer. A friend of mine had his PC fail. He told me over FB that it puffed out some smoke from the back and died then wouldn't turn on. I said over FB it sounds like the PSU failed. So I go over to his place to have a look, took one sniff of the PSU and confirmed my diagnosis. We then went to a computer shop and bought a replacement PSU, came home and fitted it to his PC and bobs ya uncle.
Great Video!
hi bro i have a PC like this, but when turn on only show a yellow light if you can help me i appreciate it
check and nothing
Carlos Mujica
then the motherboard is dead. i have had a 10 buck dell from 2000 and when i turned it on it just gave me a yellow light
usually means powersupply issue, check that everything is properly plugged in, or its the CPU which has died
Ignore my 2yr old dumb original comment
By motherboard only shows a yellow light and it won't turn on I've tries different psus ram and harddrives any help?!? Ty °_° ^_^
Honestly dont know maybe motherboard? eeh im about to give up on it lol or just buy a new mobo idk and idc
+megapikachurock chuu orange/amber lights indicate cpu issue or psu
I work on these every day. They all are very frigidity with their memory sockets. We have a few hundred where I work. Some Pentium Ds, Core 2 Duos, and i7s. They are all full towers, different models, but share the same style case.
Hey uxwbill, i just got one of these a couple of days ago, however mine has a graphics card with the dms59 connector and it has no fan just a black heatsink. Sadly i have no sata drive to install windows, but i am guessing its an ati card?
What was the cause that the computer making sound in the begin? The memory but why?
These machines really rock i do not know how many i recapped and one of them i use as my htpc now only thing i dislike is the cpu fan lol it is way to loud :)
Wonder if you can fool it to believe it is still have have the same cooling and put water cooling? :)
I also tried without luck to upgrade it with a few extra sata ports i even added the small 10nF caps but maybe it been disable in bios? :)
What cheap (3.0ghz+) 64bit CPU would you recommend in this pc?
I have an optiplex 745 that does basically the same thing but the so called "Growl" seems to beep on and off. No idea what's wrong, no memory in it either. The thing is, I would think it would give a normal beep code, not that low droan in incremental beeps.
*****
Yeah, I'm aware of that. Just an update, after I posted this comment I took some memory out of another computer and put it in. It turned on and booted to a live USB stick with linux, but yeah, the groaning in the psu continues. I've been told it has something to do with the copper coil inside the psu compressing and decompressing.
I have several of these. CPU and p/s fans don't last real long but otherwise nice computers. Fans easy to replace so no big deal .
Wasn't this computer in one of your hamfest videos?
+AIO inc. You have obviously not watched that video
i have restored my
I had an Austin computer running Windows 98 and when I overloaded the memory, it kept beeping loudly for 10-20 seconds before coming up with a RAM error on screen. I thought the Optiplex series were all post-Pentium 4's.
It's a Growlin' Dell! I don't know why I have 'Rawhide' by The Blues Brothers in my head right now. Very odd!
Awesome! My aunt gave me one for free and I love it, just one thing power supply went bad on me, replaced it, hard drive was bad after that (Note it worked for months before with no trouble) so I discovered it had a spare hard drive, and now when i went to reinstall windows I discovered it wasnt detecting one of my ram sticks and soon discovered it is bad :(.
The power supply rusn too hot. The one in my 755 has leaky caps.
how did you literally do it
can u plz tell me my optiplex is not starting?
when I turn it on it give me no display and it power button light turn orange
kindly suggest me what can I do??
orange/amber light usually indicates that there is a cpu/ram problem, so try reseating your ram checking caps or even reseat your cpu etc and also does the computer beep and or does the fan run loud?
Can you help me I have same Pc but when i turn i on it makes srange ongoing noise non stop for like 2 mins or so and then it stops the fan is on and i have orange light on the front...And the test inducator when I turn it on just on sec is on number 4.I dont know whats the problem...Can you help me?
Erratic behavior like this is often a sign of a failed power supply. The orange LED also indicates a possible power supply failure, faulty expansion card, bad CPU or a system that can't even begin to start.
Inspect the computer's motherboard thoroughly for capacitors (cylinder shapes) whose tops have exploded or leaked. Any of those may also cause the problem and would have to be replaced for reliable operation.
If a computer growls at you then you better hurry and feed it some trolls or run for the nearest approved priest to perform a "dustercism" lol
thanks will do
What if any OS are you planning on installing once you fix those bulging capacitors?
Bad memory connections, what a laugh lol :-)
I tend to slide a bit of cardboard in to the slots to clean them, its slightly abrasive and clears any muck, what a great use for cerial packets :-))
Great vide
Once the capacitors quit, the system will turn on, flicker twice, then shut off. To my dismay, these caps are responsible for the CPU power.
I too used to buy cans of air and it's way too expensive for what it is. Plus if you tilt the bottle liquid burst out. I clean mine and my brother pc every 4-5 months with my 8 gal air compressor. It take about 4 gal of air per pc when you greatly abuse of it. I paid 240$ for it and it will last me many years. If money is an issue you can still buy a 100$ 2gal one, some don't use any oil for the motor, and will work way better than air cans.
i would agree an oil less air compressor are great for inside the computer chassis. especially when you see these little dust bunnies or the moustaches on the front grill. either size will do.
should have posted what i did in that other video in this one about computers. oh well. mine is mid tower too.
Hah, thats the same case as my Optiplex 780. I think. But that DVD drive is better than mine.
I need to see exactly what u did. U cut the cleaning part out of the video. I have the exact same computer doing the exact same thing. Growling no video no boot ugh.
Odds are I clearly explained what I did. Maybe I even threw it in the dishwasher, which is a very effective way to clean dirty boards. And I do have a video about that, which you can watch. Remove the battery from the motherboard and give it a minimum of a week in fairly direct sunlight to dry out. Do NOT rush this.
uxwbill Still can't believe that works, dishwasher pc cleaning. I found a RUclips video showing someone hand washing a disassembled laptop someone slipped soda all over, it surprisingly came back to life.
sub-d style thumbscrew fasteners only damage boards beyond repair... A damaged connector I can replace, a chunk of multi layered PCB I can not..
Not that I would ever bother fixing junk like this though.
them computers are popular here I seen them in our hospital a newer one of course I think it had a Windows 7 sticker
Peter Bob we have 2 at KFC, one running Windows XP and other running Windows Vista
do you have an HP media center pc?
What OS is in that system?
Black Metal PC :D
btw it a mini tower....
i have one of theses they are nice but they are space heaters lol
found one of these babys in the trash, had a bad psu so i custom fit some other sff psu into it :) also threw a pentium d 3.4 and 4gb ddr2 in it :D runs hotter than hell tho :(
Lol "Keyboard Failiure Strike F1 Key to continue." *WTF* HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO PRESS F1 WITH A KEYBOARD FAILIURE??? Lel
***** OMG UXWBILL MESSAGED ME Yeah, I could just plug in a different PS/2 Keyboard and strike F1 with a coffee mug and ill be ok ;)
Bad caps hundred percent
Video Quality: Crap!
RUclipsr Quality: Great!
i have one too
LMFAO!!! i have a dell optiplex gx520 and i have been working on it all day... how ironic...
haha I have this machines in my work and It suppose to be tech company.
What OS is in that system?