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+--- Thread: Dell Optiplex 7010 Display Port Issue [solved] and other troublehshooting (/showthread.php?tid=3)
Dell Optiplex 7010 Display Port Issue [solved] and other troublehshooting - blim - 05-15-2026
Just thought I would write about this Dell Optiplex I acquired for free because it wasn't working. It wouldn't post on Display Port. I also had to do some other troubleshooting but I was delighted when I realized it has an i7 3370 3.4 Ghz CPU.
The long story short here is if you have a Dell Optiplex or similar that you think is good but it wont post on Display Port, you're going to need a VGA cable and a monitor with VGA input to change the BIOS settings. For some reason, pulling the CMOS battery and/or booting it with the reset jumper removed, didn't seem to clear whatever was not allowing it to post and boot on Display Port. Here's a link if you want to try that.
I got a VGA cable from work, connected it to an old LCD TV I still have with a VGA port and boom, it posted and I could get into the BIOS configuration page. I'm not sure exactly what did it but I reset to defaults, then in the video section I switched it from "auto" (you would think this would work) to "Intel HD 4000". The CMOS battery removal or jumper should have reset to default so I think for some reason it seems telling it to specfically use the onboard graphics chip, it forced it to ouput the video signal to the right place, the Display Port.
It also might be worth mentioning at first it didn't post on one of the display ports, I moved it to the second port, rebooted and then I saw the spash screen.
When I first tried to boot it up, I was using Display Port on my main monitor and it wouldn't post. The fans spun and everything seemed normal so I figured RAM, worst case a bad CPU.
Being a Dell build and compact case, you have to remove a lot of stuff to work on it. I'm not really a fan of all the plastic latching mechanisms Dell uses for securing their hardware, I find some of it more of a pain then simple screws in any ATX build.
Anways I decided to disconnect and remove anything that isn't needed to function. I disconnected the SATA cables from the board and yanked out the drive tray with the SSD and DVD-RW, unplugged the front panel.
I had it setup in a differnet spot so it was on VGA but it still wasn't posting, atleast if I remeber right. So I removed all the ram and then put one 4GB module back in and then it posted. I figured it had a bad memory module and I'd just try them one by one to eliminate the bad one.
It still didn't want to boot, even with the hard drive reconnected, "no bootable media", but the hard drive seemed to be okay. Okay not really a big deal, MBR issue or BIOS setting, wrose case reinstall windows, but I didn't touch it for a couple months because it wasn't a priority.
A couple months later and I had sold my gaming PC, because I wasn't using it anymore and it needed some maintenance that I didn't want to deal with, another 'Blim story' not worth telling, so I decided to get this thing going. That's when I realized it wasn't posting on Display Port, so I had to connect it to a monitor with VGA, change the settings to get it booting up on DP.
I put all the RAM modules back in one by one and they're all working 16GB or DDR3 so now I'm questioning what was going on in the first place, maybe it was just a video signal issue all long? Later I will run Memtest86 to be sure.
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The previous owner had recently installed a 480 GB SSD as well. So now, for free with a bit of hassle, I have a decent little i7 3770 3.4 Ghz system wit 16 GB of DDR3 and a 480 GB drive. I'll try to find a cheap GPU for it from a similar era, somehting like a GTX 1070. Maybe I'll sell it, either way it will be a decent little work CPU for now and I'll need it because I have a bunch of manul data backup to do, GBs worth of it.