XPS 8300 System freezes then shutdown - 3 Beeps

Hello!  I found another thread with this problem located here.  The gist of it is possible chipset or motherboard failure :-(  It did have some tips on ways to clear it up that you may want to try. 

thanks beamermt79.  i saw the post you gave me a link for,  i was hoping for some better news.  anyone know how much a motherboard runs?

Did you try clearing BIOS like I suggested in that other thread?

You can find XPS 8300 motherboards, for example, here, here, here, here. And there's always Dell Spare Parts (1-800-357-3355) or eBay.

If you buy a board, make sure it has the Intel B3 revision (or later) of the chipset.

Can I presume that means no beeps now...?

What color is the power button, and is it steady or blinking, now that you replaced the battery?

If the power light is solid white and the
computer is not responding — The display
may not be connected or powered on.

If the power light is solid amber —
The computer is in sleep/standby mode or
there might be a problem with the system
board or the power supply.

If the power light is blinking amber — The
computer has detected an error during POST.
There might be a problem with the system
board or the power supply.

If the power button is off, see if the power supply LED below the power connector on rear of PC is on or off...

hi ron,

I followed the steps in replacing the battery with a new battery to reset the bios and now my machine won't even turn on when I press the power button...  any suggestions

Correct no beeps now. When I press the power button it is a white light, but now displays "missing operating system". I do not have it backed up. HELP!!! I can't loose the hard drive...

Ron,

That is correct...  now when i push the power button the light is solid white except now I get a message on a black screen, "missing operating system".  please HELP! i cannot loose the hard drive.  it is not backed up...

What version of Windows? Do you have a RAID setup with 2 hard drives ? Or maybe one hard drive and a small SSD cache drive?

Power off, unplug, and press/hold power button for ~15 sec. Open case and carefully check SATA data cable between hard drive(s) and motherboard, and power cable to drive(s) from PSU. Also check anything else you might have accidentally dislodged or disconnected while replacing the battery.

Close case and reboot with only mouse, monitor and keyboard connected. Immediately press F2 to open BIOS setup. See if your hard drive is correctly recognized on the SATA0 port.  Then make sure SATA Mode is set to AHCI, assuming you only have one hard drive. Or to RAID if you have a RAID setup with either 2 hard drives or 1 hard drive and 1 SSD.  Be sure to save any changes before exiting setup.

See if it boots to desktop now.

I believe it is RAID, 2 hard drives.  checked all connections and they are good. still getting "missing operating system" and not able to go into bios settings by pressing F2.  Any additional suggestions?  I appreciate your continued support...

system originally built with windows 7...since upgraded to 8.1 then windows 10

got to bios setup FINALLY.  I changed the system date and time to the current .  SATA0 is set to my hard drive, but i did need to change the SATA Mode to RAID.  Saved settings and exited.  Rebooted to desktop.  SUCCESS!!!  Thank you...

I figured it was a RAID setup. When you cleared BIOS by removing the battery, you reset SATA Mode to the default, ACHI, so that's why you got that "missing operating system" error.

Do you know if it's RAID0 or RAID1? RAID0 spreads files across both drives, and neither has a complete copy of any file. So if you lose one HDD, you lose everything. RAID0 is very risky.

RAID1 makes a backup copy of everything on the drive connected to SATA0 on the other drive. So if you lose either drive, you can still recover your files.

Either way, BACK UP YOUR FILES ON EXTERNAL MEDIA ASAP! You lucked out this time, but... :emotion-5:

I do not know if it's RAID0 or RAID1. Thanks again for your help. I've already started backing my system up. Thanks...