Dell desktop not booting

itm · 25 Jul 2011 at 22:38

I'm troubleshooting a Dell Inspiron 530 for a friend. When I first powered it on it booted into Windows 7, then displayed a message in the system tray saying that it was installing a driver. It then beeped 4 times and shut itself down.
When I tried to power it up again it continually repeated a series of 4 beeps and displayed nothing on the monitor.
I tried removing and replacing each of the 2 RAM chips in turn, and now when I power up the fans stay on but there's no beeping and nothing gets displayed on the monitor.
Does anyone have any ideas?

kiel367 · 25 Jul 2011 at 22:49

depending on the beeps, if its one long beep then 3 short ones, its the gfx, but could be a few things like, the ram could be fubar'd

itm · 26 Jul 2011 at 08:22

kiel367 said:
depending on the beeps, if its one long beep then 3 short ones, its the gfx, but could be a few things like, the ram could be fubar'd

Since removing and re-seating the RAM I get no beeps at all, and nothing on the display :confused:

kiel367 · 29 Jul 2011 at 12:40

try some new ram?

itm · 29 Jul 2011 at 18:30

I've tried each of the 2 sticks individually in slot 1 and get the same problem with both, so I think it's a long shot that BOTH are screwed.
I'm now back to getting 4 beeps, repeatedly, which seems to be a "system timer error" according to some sources. I wonder if a new CMOS battery would resolve it...? (I don't have any spares to hand, so can't try it quickly)

kiel367 · 29 Jul 2011 at 23:51

cmos battery shouldnt cause no video, id try and get hold of some ram you know defo works, if that doesnt solve it, is there a gfx card in it? if there is remove it and try the onboard gfx if it has it, if all else fails the mobo could be fried.