Running The Epsa Diagnostics; System Diagnostic Lights - Dell Alienware Area-51m Service Manual

Running the ePSA diagnostics

1 Turn on your computer.
2 As the computer boots, press the F12 key as the Dell logo appears.
3 On the boot menu screen, select the Diagnostics option.
4 Click the arrow at the bottom left corner.
Diagnostics front page is displayed.
5 Click the arrow in the lower-right corner to go to the page listing.
The items detected are listed.
6 To run a diagnostic test on a specific device, press Esc and click Yes to stop the diagnostic test.
7 Select the device from the left pane and click Run Tests.
8 If there are any issues, error codes are displayed.
Note the error code and validation number and contact Dell.

System diagnostic lights

Power and battery-status light/hard-drive activity light
Indicates the battery-charge status or the hard-drive activity.
NOTE: Press Fn+H to toggle this light between power and battery-status light and hard-drive activity light.
Hard-drive activity light
Turns on when the computer reads from or writes to the hard drive.
NOTE: Hard-drive activity light is supported only on computers shipped with hard drive.
Power and battery-status light
Indicates the power and battery-charge status
Solid white — Power adapter is connected and the battery has more than 5 percent charge.
Amber — Computer is running on battery and the battery has less than 5 percent charge.
Off
• Power adapter is connected and the battery is fully charged.
• Computer is running on battery and the battery has more than 5 percent charge.
• Computer is in sleep state, hibernation, or turned off
NOTE: Hard-drive activity light is supported only on computers shipped with hard drive.
The power and battery-status light blinks amber along with beep codes indicating failures.
For example, the power and battery-status light blinks amber two times followed by a pause, and then blinks white three times
followed by a pause. This 2,3 pattern continues until the computer is turned off indicating no memory or RAM is detected.
The following table shows different light patterns and describes what they indicate.
Table 14. Diagnostics
Light pattern
2,1
2,2
2,3
2,4
2,5
Problem description
CPU failure
System board: BIOS and ROM failure
No memory or RAM detected
Memory or RAM failure
Invalid memory installed
109