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Spent 4 hours troubleshooting a boot loop on a Dell Optiplex, it was a stuck power button
Pulled an old Optiplex 7010 out of storage for a client. Plugged it in, hit power, fans spin for 3 seconds then shut off. Repeat over and over. I swapped PSU, reseated RAM, cleared CMOS, even pulled the CMOS battery. Nothing worked for like 4 hours. Finally took the front bezel off and noticed the power button felt kinda mushy. Used a flathead screwdriver to short the pins on the motherboard header and it booted right up. The button was stuck in the pressed position. Has anyone else had a simple thing like a stuck button waste a whole afternoon?
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ivanlewis18d ago
Add the front panel connector swapped around backward too. That'll give you the same boot loop nonsense. I've also seen where the reset button gets stuck and that causes issues too. On those Optiplex cases the front panel wiring is all one block so you can't easily swap individual wires around. Worth checking both power and reset buttons by unplugging the whole front panel connector from the board and shorting the pins manually. Saves a lot of guesswork.
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