My desktop was working perfectly fine up until I returned from Christmas. I shut the computer down normally prior to leaving that weekend and did not attempt to turn it back on until a few days after Christmas (maybe Wednesday). At any rate, the computer gave me a series of beeps with a yellow light (steady) on the motherboard. My brother, via text, said that the steady light indicated a hardware issue and that the beeps meant it was an issue with the video card. Well, he had me pull and reinstall the RAM (just to check) which didn't do anything. He then suggested I try to pull out the video card and replace it with one that was working. A friend of mine then came over to help and removed the video card and installed a similar card (same type, just a little more powerful) into the slot to see if it would work. The card came from a computer that was known to work. Unfortunately the computer gave the same beep sequence (1 long, 2 short) even with the video card that was known to work. My friend tried both ports with no luck. His ultimate diagnosis was that the motherboard went bad. My brother has since mailed me a lower power video card that I can try (and will, once it arrives sometime today). A few days ago, my boyfriend looked at the computer and tried the video card in the secondary slot. Again with no luck. He tried pulling the battery on the motherboard, and then switched something (looked kind of like a fuse?) on the motherboard as well, with no luck, in addition to looking at the video card. I'm obviously not that computer savvy, and I don't know anyone out here who can really take a look at it who has formal training (everyone that I've talked to just learned what they know by tinkering around). Do you have any other ideas to try?

1/3/2012 8:20:55 AM

What kind of computer/motherboard? The beep codes may be different depending on the manufacturer. From a Dell website for instance:

1 long beep; 2 short beeps: Memory is detected, but a memory failure has occurred.

If you want to check the memory go to http://www.memtest86.com/. There's a free download that will create a bootable flash drive that you can use to test your memory. Just boot the computer off the flash drive and allow it to run for a while. Usually if the error is severe the memtest application will detect an error right away, but I've also seen plenty of cases where the program had to run for several hours to detect an error.

1/3/2012 8:41:17 AM

Oops sorry about that. Its a Dell XPS 630, 3-4 years old.

So when I reboot it'll give me an option to run from the flash drive? Will the program run automatically then?

1/3/2012 8:48:41 AM

hmmm...I'm definitely no computer wiz. I downloaded version 4.0a windows zip ISO for creating bootable cd...I'm not sure what to do now

1/3/2012 8:55:17 AM

I just did the option to create a bootable flash drive since I had several spares laying around. If you do that make sure nothing important is on the flash drive since it will be formatted.

If you go the bootable CD option just burn the CD image.

After you have a bootable device just plug it in (for flash drive) or put the CD in the drive (for bootable CD). When you boot the PC it should flash up some text for the BIOS screen like "Press F12 for boot options" or something similar. I don't know the exact language or exact key to press, you'll just have to see what it says. Press that key while the text is flashing up and it will give you the option to select the flash drive or CD drive as a boot device.

After you do that the program should launch automatically, no need to start anything just let it boot and do its thing.

[Edited on January 3, 2012 at 9:11 AM. Reason : -]

1/3/2012 9:09:58 AM

it just occurred to me that I had a brain fart when I replied about the bootable program. The XPS won't boot up at all. It tries, and I hear the fans humming, but it almost immediately starts the beep sequence without loading windows or even getting to the boot screen.

I'm having separate issues with my backup computer (onto which I downloaded the program you recommended) and for a moment I had confused the two (oops).

1/3/2012 11:12:00 AM

Have you tried resetting the CMOS on the motherboard first?

http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/xps630i/en/om/html/clearing.htm

Also, try different ram altogether, it could be faulty RAM. It looks like your friends tried swapping the video cards, which is good, but not the RAM itself, which could be it.

http://www.my630i.com/viewtopic.php?p=40440

[Edited on January 3, 2012 at 4:27 PM. Reason : -]

1/3/2012 4:19:13 PM

You've tried different components in your computer, so you might consider also trying your components in a different computer to confirm. All you really know at this point is that nothing you have tried has changed anything.

1/4/2012 10:17:28 AM

does anything show up on the screen at all? I realize you say it doesn't "get to the boot screen" but I'm just making sure. Non-computer people will use boot/start/post/load interchangeably

1/5/2012 5:14:48 PM

she can boot up now.

1/5/2012 5:16:07 PM

Who was right?

1/6/2012 9:41:01 AM