Takes 2-4 times power on / off before booting (2 beeps) Mystery

Hi Guys.

I have a Dell Desktop that works well. However, I often press the power button and get no signal to the monitors. I hear 2 short beeps.

Then I press the power button again briefly, and the fan immediately turns off. I press the power again (not hold) and it starts to boot, but again, 2 short beeps and no signal to monitor.

After 2-5 times doing this, it all loads, and everything is great, and won't mess up if I leave the p.c. on.

Anyone have any ideas? Could it be a graphics card going? ram problem? battery on the mother board?

What could be causing this mystery?

M14

Hey Guys, thanks so much for the good tips.

Dude, I will try and fill out specs tom. (plus mem test). I did change the Cmos battery with another PC and reseat ram..

Unfortunately, now my PC is going into recovery mode OverMaster I wish I had read your advice before I turned it on and off 20 times.. I think I've probably done more damage than I even would have.

I think you're probably right about the P suppy.. Anyway of testing that with a multi meter?

Dude, thanks for the good tips, and Oh Man OvenMaster, that sounds scary.

I've located a Precision 490 power supply (used at a local shop), but am thinking it may be something else actually. I find that when I manage to get the computer going, it goes into recovery mode. Eventually when I click finish, it goes to restart and won't.. Just goes black.

However, when I unplug the hard drives, I can get it to boot every time, and get into the bios etc without any trouble. Do you guys think this suggests it's just a bad system drive, and that I may be buying this power supply in vain? Or is it maybe just booting to bios easily without the hard drive attached because it doesn't need the power load to spin the disc?

If you guys can think of anything to try tonight (like maybe booting to a Linux live image and see if I can access the disks from there, and if so, it's maybe it's just the system drive that's bad?) I'd love to hear about em.

Any other tips on what to do when recovery doesn't work would be awesome too.

Sorry this thread is crashing out of control, and thanks for your patience,

M14

OvenMaster (and Dude), thanks very much for the support and guidance.

I'll be picking up that power supply today. Fingers crossed!

M14

Hi Guys,

So, located the new power supply today, installed it annnnnnd, No love

Well, maybe it was the power supply, that damaged the operating system, and now the operating system is taking me to a black screen? In any case, moving forward. After I power up / down 4 or 5 times, I can get to the system restore option, but it says system restore is offline. Also, when I insert a new W7 disc, it says it's not compatible.

Does it make sense to: take out system drive, and view it in a dock from another computer to discover exactly which version of W7 it was, then copy that down and try and track down an older disc?

I have a lot of important data on the disc, so don't want to reformat and loose all info.

Any suggestions?