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I had left my Dell Dimension E510 on and came back later and it wouldn't turn on. The front power light was flashing yellow and no matter how long I pushed it, it wouldn't turn on.

I disconnected the power for a bit and re-connected it and still the same.

Someone said in a post somewhere to try removing the RAM sticks because they thought it might be caught in a data loop somehow. This didn't help.

Someone else said it was hung somehow and that the wake up on lan was enabled.

Finally, I unplugged the computer again and removed the quarter-sized lithium ion battery on the motherboard, put it back in, plugged the power back in and it powered up fine.

Yep, I had the exact same problem... exact same solution.

Dell Dimension E510, running linux Fedora
Symptom: Won't power on, will not boot, power button blinks yellow.

In my case, my ten-month old daughter was playing with the mouse on a blank desktop. She magically powered it off! When I tried to power it back on... nothing. Button blinks yellow. Tried disconnecting power cord. Nothing. Tried disconnecting all cords and leaving it to cool for an hour. Nothing. Found this post. Opened it up, popped out the CMOS battery, waited 30 sec, popped it back in. Poof! Powers on just fine, back to normal. Of course, it lost all the BIOS data, so I had to go in to setup and reset the time/date. It initially failed to boot when the floppy drive seek failed (of course it failed! I don't have a floppy drive.) Back in to BIOS setup, go to "drives", set floppy to "off", reboot. Works great!.

If this happens to you, I'd recommend replacing the CMOS battery. $5 at Radio Shack (panasonic lithium 3V, CR2032)

Happy Computing!

Wow, you guys are life savers, I almost freaked out when I saw my main computer where I do my important stuff not turn on....It's great to have people that post previous experiences and try to help others....I was able to turn on my machine after taking out the battery...Now I'm off to RS to purchase my new battery.

Take further advantage of this experience and start backing up all of your valuable files on a regular basis.