I am not even going to attempt to come up with anything close to a technical answer. That said: I had some issues with my system at first. I had the CPU heatsink/fan assembly replaced. Ditto with the keyboard, mouse and TV card. My thinking was that "Better the devil you know........." I think that we can all agree that for the kind of money we are spending the system should absolutely work out of the box! However that isn't always the case. This is NOT just a "Dell Issue" - I have been on the HP site several times and if there is any difference between the two HP is even worse.

The way I looked (Look) at it I could have sent the thing back and gotten a "new" one. If you read the fine print in the sales contract you will notice the section on replacements. Any replacement parts, including whole systems, can be new or refurbished. Perfectly legal and an industry standard clause. So instead of packing the system up and sending it back to get whatever Dell had available I decided to have the NEW one I had in hand brought up to standard. With my luck the replacement system would have had other and/or worse problems that what I started out with. I hated having to jump thru all of the hoops to get what I had already paid for but that seems to be part of the deal nowdays.

I made sure to follow EVERY suggested fix the Dell Techs wanted. (even when I was absolutely, without a doubt, positive that they had no idea what they were doing!) I went thru several remote control sessions to no avail. I saved every chat log and email, just in case. The Techs have a script that they must follow so I went along for the ride. In the end Dell sent an onsite Tech with the new parts and I am now, finally, happy as a clam.

Your blinking amber power light is not normal. As to whether it is a serious problem or just I freaky light - I have no clue. I would insist that one way or another Dell take care of the issue, as well as any others you might have. In my opinion there isn't anything that should be ignored or overlooked with a brand new computer system! We pay top dollar for top notch hardware. Fair enough. Make Dell live up to their end of the deal.

Of course in the end it is your hard earned money and your choice.

Please let us know how things turn out.

Jeff :emotion-22:

Hi Lester40,

One thing, you said that the system is running fine. All except for the "amber" power button light. I believe it should be white when lit. It could be a couple of things, 1- From the factory the installation wiring was not set accordingly to specs. 2- An onsite tech should be called out and have the front bezel inspected for wireing.

Just in case, you can reboot the computer and as it reboots hit the "F12" button and run the PSA test, mem test, and then Dell diags. If it passes all of these more than likely its not a hardware but more of a faulty wire connection or as I said. The front panel bezel needs to be inspected, or at least I would request to have a tech come out and take a look at it.

Hope this helps.

Runnin

One thing you can do, with the PC powered off, is open the case and check the cabling.  It may be a connector is loose and not fully seated and causing the problem.  Check each connector and push on them to make sure they are fully and correctly seated.  Could be one is loose or partially connected due to shipping, which happens occasionally.

If not and you are not happy, call Dell and ask for the Return Authorization ASAP and tell them it's not working correctly and tech support won't help.  In many cases they will offer to replace the system so they don't have to issue a refund.   If you just call and tell them you don't want it, they will charge you a "restocking fee".

I first want to say how sorry I am for not getting back to this post sooner. After I found the problem I relaxed. But I should have posted back as to help somebody eles that might have had or have the same problem. From reading the XPS 9100 manual and from what the tech guy was telling me I had an idea what might be causeing the problem. I had a 16 foot USB Active Extension cable pluged to one of the USB ports. I had that pluged into a USB HUB. I pluged 3 wireless mice and one keyboard into the USB HUB. One mice and keyboard where a combination unit. I also had another 16 foot USB Active Extension cable pluged in and running to my old printer. This printer had a wire that made the old parallell printer work with a USB port. So what I did was unhook all that and plug everthing in with one USB cable to one USB connection. I did that for all my stuff that I use with the computer. I got a new printer because it was not working right and it did not print very good anyway. After this the computer worked flawlesslee:emotion-2:.

After many, many hours spent with Dell technical support, I did the troubleshooting on my own and came up with the following:

I unplugged every cable from my box and only had my wired keyboard and mouse plugged into a Dell monitor built in USB hub, which I pluged into a single USB port (any of them) on the back of the box. This generated a blinking power light no matter which back USB port I used.

I then unplugged the USB cable from the back port and used the top ports (next to the headphone jack) and this generated a solid white power light. Aha!!!  

This result was the same no matter what other peripherals were plugged in.

After telling Dell tech support about this, they FINALLY told me a piece of very useful information. It seems that the back USB ports have a low lever of power and the top and front USB ports are fully powered. SO, if you use a device that draws some power and use the back USB port, the device connection will not be recognized by the computer on startup and the computer will respond with a blinking amber light to tell you that something is wrong with a device.

So, we now have to have certain devices and hubs to the full power front or top USB ports (especially some external USB hard drives and many USB devices connected by long cables that can generate power loss).

However, you can still use the back ports with some of these devices if the flashing light doesn't bother you and they work.

Please let me know if you all agree with this result and have had the same solutions.

Thanks for your post, NJGOLFER.  I, too had the blinking amber light and dreaded spending hours on the phone with Dell.  They've already replaced my hard drive.  :emotion-4:

My amber light started blinking once I had installed a new KVM switch.  The switch has its own power, so I'm not quite sure why it causes a problem, but it does.  It came with special cords that have both USB and DVI connections bundled together.  I unplugged the USB connection from the back of my computer and from the switch, since the existing cord wouldn't reach around to the front USB ports.  I used a separate USB cord to connect the computer from the front USB port to the switch, and voila, the power button is solid white again!

I do HATE that this has to be connected in the front, since I'm not planning to unplug this any time soon, and it's very ugly  on my sleek new machine.  It was awfully short-sighted of Dell to not provide full power to the back USB ports.  I'm also puzzled as to why there are only 4 of them in the back.

The cord with DVI and USB is probably intended for a monitor with a built-in hub.

Not sure why your KVM does not work plugged into the back. Seems odd, although I don't believe it's for lack of "full power".

Using the cord with DVI/USB would be no problem if I could plug the USB in the back where the DVI connection is.  Now I just have 2 dangling ends of USB cable.  :/

The KVM did "work," but definitely caused the blinking amber light.  I'll leave it plugged into the front just in case.

I have a two day old Studio XPS 9100 that also had the power button blinking amber and noticed that the cooling fan was running nearly constantly and sounded very loud.  The problem is definitely with the rear USB  ports.  Once I moved my devices to the top front ports, the light no longer blinks and the cooling fan runs a lot less often  and does seem much quieter. My wireless mouse and keyboard were connected to my monitor USB ports which need to be connected with a cable to the computer. So I now have them plugged into the top USB ports and try to keep single connection USB cables from my devices to the rear USB ports. Everything seems to running correctly and the fan noise problem has been solved.   I was on the verge of returning the computer because the fan was as loud as a vacuum cleaner.

I found this thread when my 9100 started doing this.

With the help here of looking at the USB connectivity, I found that although I had my Xerox DocuMate 3115 scanner connected to two of the USB ports on my Dell U2311H monitor, if I had the scanner on during the power up cycle, I would receive the flashing amber light. Leaving the scanner off until the whole system has started and then turning it on does not give me the flashing amber light.

However, once I get the flashing amber light, turning off the scanner does not make it go away.

So, troubleshooting this problem is a pain as you have to reconnect each item and restart the computer.

I guessed at the scanner as it was a late addition and did not notice the flashing light previously (though I did not notice it immediately upon adding the scanner), and, since it needs two USB outlets to power it, I realized that it was a heavy-draw item and so it was a logical first place to start. I got lucky.

I can't explain exactly what's happening (I wish there was a detailed utility we could run to tell us what exactly triggered the light), but it seems to be related to USB power. I don't know why the monitor doesn't isolate the computer from the scanner's current draw as I think it's independent of sequence--maybe the current draw DATA gets sent back to the PC even though the actually power is supplied by the monitor?

It's an easy fix--and it's good to keep the scanner off as I use it infrequently and it nicely powers up with its front-panel switch.

Hope this helps someone.

Cheers,

Richard