Monday, June 17, 2019

Dell Optiplex Amber Power Button and Not Starting - CMOS Battery?




Few days back my home computer which is a Dell Optiplex 980 failed to power on and blue LED in the power button was showing Amber and the usual sequence of power on self check and sequence of blinking numbers did not appear.

I trying power cycling and the status was the same. Looked behind the computer and the power supply unit's indicator was green. 

I recalled that previous time when the machine had started the clock was reset to an older date and there was a possibility that the onboard CMOS battery would have drained. Typically a drained CMOS battery would not stop a machine from booting but it would be a thing worth trying. 

Opened up the unit, removed the CMOS button cell CR2032 and replaced it from a new one from my stock of batteries. After that the computer powered on, the amber in power button was back to blue, machine did initial configuration and powered on. I set the date to current date rebooted it once more to check that every thing works. 

I breathed a sigh of relief. If you have similar problem on a Dell PC, you may want to try this easy fix and let me know if that worked for you.