Inspiron 660s tower crashes and then 2 beeps repeating

Any signs of overheating? Are all fans working?

Have you tried reseating the RAM modules in their slots and using canned air to blow out the dust?

Any error messages logged in Windows Event Viewer around the time of a crash?

You can try this:

1. Reboot and press F2 to open BIOS setup
2. Copy down all current BIOS settings
3. Power off, unplug
4. Press/hold power button for ~15 sec
5. Open case and remove motherboard battery
6. Press/hold power button for ~30 sec
7. Remove all RAM modules and reseat the one in slot 1
8. Reinstall the battery* and close case
9. Run the system for a while to see if it crashes again
10. Then swap all RAM modules into slot 1 (steps 3-6, and swap modules at #7)
11. Repeat until all modules tested are in slot 1 and you ID a bum module
12. If they all work in slot 1, add RAM back to the other slots, one at a time, until you ID a bum slot or all modules are reinstalled and no further crashes

*If battery is more than ~2-3 years old, this might be the time to replace it. CR2032, 3-volt lithium ion battery, ~$2 at discount stores. If nothing else, you'll rule the battery out as part of this problem.

Hello Ron, and thank you for taking the time to write everything you did! Much appreciated!

>Any signs of overheating? Are all fans working?

I've considered a dead fan as another major possibility. When I tear into it, I will try to verify that the PSU fan is working properly, and, also, the fan above the CPU.

>Have you tried reseating the RAM modules in their slots and using canned air to blow >out the dust?

I told my wife awhile ago that there is some possibility, that, somehow, one or both of the RAM DIMMs is loose in the socket and those should be removed and reseated.

>Any error messages logged in Windows Event Viewer around the time of a crash?

If I can get it running under M$ Windows, I will try to locate the Windows Event log(s) to see if I see an indication of what caused it to crash when running Windows. It also crashed after I booted from the Memtest86 CD, so that would seem to eliminate any possibility this is a Windows issue or related to the hard disk drive.

NOTE: I asked my wife approximately how long the box was turned on, before these events, and she didn't think very long. Possibly 5 or 10 or 15 minutes. That has me wanting to verify that the fan above the CPU is spinning, when the box is powered on.
If that fan isn't spinning, after a few minutes, the temperature will build up quickly and the CPU will be shut down because of the Thermal event.

This box was ordered during October 2012 and delivered to our house during November 2012. It has probably been powered on 10 or 12 hours a day, on most days, since then.
Other than a scare during May 2015, I think my daughter was playing a game at that time, it froze up badly, but that never happened again. This began happening this week.

I hadn't thought about replacing the battery, but buying a new one, before I open the box, is probably a good idea. THanks!

Looking at the manual, the Inspiron 660s will be much harder to open up and work on, than the big Dell towers we began buying in 1997, or the 5 Dell Latitude E64xx laptops that we have now. I will probably work on this Saturday morning or Sunday morning.

THank you for all of your ideas and suggestions! Much appreciated! Lanny

Keep in mind that even if all fans are working, it's still possible the thermal paste between the heat sink and CPU dried out and allowing it to overheat. But leave this one for "if all else fails"...

Follow-On: My wife brought the Inspiron 660s Micro Tower into "the office" yesterday and I used it for 5+ hours.  So far, the only things in your list that I have done are 1 and 3 and 4 and 9. I did a full scan with the Anti Virus program and then ran the  utilities that are packaged with that Anti Virus. Then, I did one pass of the RAM with Memtest86 and then I ran the Western Digital Diagnostics on the hard disk drive. There were no errors.  I heard the "2 beeps" a few days ago and I saw the problems, but yesterday it seemed to be working fine.  I plan to continue running Diagnostics on other components, later today, after I return home.  The only thing I saw yesterday was that it seems slow. The Dell factory installed one 4 GB DIMM in it, so I will buy another 4 GB DIMM and bring the RAM up to the 8 GB maximum ASAP. Possibly, with time, as I use it and test it, it will fail again.  I did enter the BIOS, hoping I might see whether there had been a Thermal Event, etc., but this is a model designed for the "Consumer" market and the BIOS is very limited, compared to a BIOS in a machine designed for "The Enterprise" and there was no information of interest in the BIOS.   

Maybe it hates your wife...? :emotion-4:

Is she running a specific app when it crashes, eg watching a vid or playing a game? Is it in a cabinet or confined area with reduced air circulation at home, but it's out in the open at the office? I guess it's also possible something was poorly seated in its slot but got jostled back into place by moving it to the office...

You need to look in the Windows Event Viewer, not in BIOS setup, for logged errors such as Thermal Event. At the Windows desktop, search for "Event Viewer" (without the quotes) to find it.

You probably will need to buy 2 modules since RAM should be installed as matched pairs. Many users around here buy RAM from Crucial because they guarantee it works if they recommended it for a specific PC model, or they will take it back. :emotion-5:

Post back and let us know how it goes.

BTW: What version of Windows is this?

I had exactly the same problem ... Inspiron 660s running fine, then suddenly shuts down with flashing amber power button and two-beep code (indicating no/bad memory). Subsequent reboots went straight to flash/beep even before DELL logo appeared.

In my case, I was able to troubleshoot it down to a bad memory *SLOT*. If DIMM1 slot (Item 9 on p.15 of User Manual) was populated with either of the two 4GB DDR3 memory cards, the system would flash/beep. If DIMM2 slot (Item 11 on p.15) was populated with either of the two memory cards, the system would boot successfully -- albeit with half the RAM.

Subsequently, online Dell Diagnostics all PASSed. Memtest86+ also passed on the remaining DIMM.

I have NO idea why a memory SLOT would spontaneously fail while the system was up & running but idle at the time. Mobo? Chipset? Dunno ... but I submitted a new post on the subject earlier today.