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1 Rookie
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28 Posts
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3346
October 6th, 2019 12:00
Will not boot. Can not access BIOS. Only beeps. Optiplex 760
My desktop will not boot. Will not even show BIOS. I get one longish beep, then 3 longish beeps and then 2 longish beeps. That is all that happens. Displays nothing.
I have tried changing the internal battery. Does not make any difference.
Desktop is out of warranty.
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speedstep
11 Legend
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47K Posts
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October 7th, 2019 06:00
Remove all the ram and put 1 stick at a time back in.
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wifen610
1 Rookie
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28 Posts
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October 7th, 2019 14:00
I went to a shop to ask some questions and the fellow gave me 2 matching 2 gb modules he had laying around (he was not even share they worked). I put them in and they worked. So, now I have 6 gb of RAM. I think problem solved. The motherboard seems far from dead.
Thanks for the tips. I was starting to give the machine up for dead.
Mary G
6 Operator
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20.1K Posts
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October 6th, 2019 13:00
Sounds like a motherboard failure and a new computer is in your immediate future. You old model has had a good long run.
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wifen610
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28 Posts
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October 7th, 2019 07:00
Thank you for the suggestion. I think it worked, sort of. I unplugged and pulled all the RAM out. Then, I put the top one back in, plugged in and restarted. I got some message about DIMM and RAM, etc. I unplugged and put the second bit of RAM in. Plugged in again and started. Same sort of message. Did the same with the third piece of RAM. Same result. Put in the last piece of RAM from the bottom. Got the same kind of beeping pattern.
So, I unplugged and pulled that bottom piece of RAM out and plugged back in and restarted and it booted up to Windows. Currently working. Good thing I guess. The computer is working without the bottom (of four) piece of RAM installed.
What is the take away here? I have some ideas. Is it as simple as a bad piece of RAM?
donm4599x
2 Intern
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478 Posts
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October 7th, 2019 13:00
Sounds like it was just a bad ram module, though the slot could be bad. Try putting one of the good modules in that slot and see what happens, just as a test to see if the slot is bad. (Make sure there is a good module in the first slot ; some machines require that.)
If your three remaining ram modules are enough memory for you, things should be fine. One of them won't be running in dual channel mode, but the speed loss is so tiny that you won't notice it unless you are doing heavy video editing (I doubt you would use such and old computer for that).
If you decide to keep the bad module in a junk drawer, be sure to label it as possibly bad, so it won't cause grief in the future.