Need laptop help- dell computer just beeps

me ^ | June 9, 2014 | Faith65

[ImJustAnotherOkie]

Everytime someone asks me some advice I always answer, how much do you want to spend?. Easy as pie.

[mmichaels1970]

If you power on and press F12, is it possible to get to the diagnostics option?

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

Agreed. Memory. Try accessing the memory chips first and removing then re-seating them. Sometimes that works. If not, get new ones. Or get a bootable CD that has a memory test on it to determine which one. Usually there are two in a Dell laptop.

[ImJustAnotherOkie]

8gb Ram
256gb SSD
Beyond that it’s just details.

[Faith65]

I will listen to the beeping again to be sure- I have done it 4 times so far and cannot discern any change- just constant beeping.

[St_Thomas_Aquinas]

-— Have to check it again- the beeping is so loud I can’t hear anything. -—

We had to reset to factory defaults my daughter’s Inspiron, and I remember the loudness of the beeping, which is a warning that you are about to erase your hard drive. So you may have accidentally entered the reset process.

Google “reset Dell Inspiron to factory settings,” to see how to exit the process.

[Faith65]

Let’s put it this way- I /we need what’s on that computer for litigation for the all the lawsuits we’re fighting trying to defend our property (not sure when last backup was completed)- so if I have to spend money on it I will.

[mmichaels1970]

One last, more drastic thing to test. The continuous beeping is bugging me here as it is usually more of a code that others have described.

It may be a stuck keyboard key. Even if the keys don't appear stuck, your computer may think a key is being pressed.

If you're feeling like you haven't much to lose, you could try removing your keyboard entirely and then starting up. If it works, you will lose the beeping and simply get a keyboard error when you attempt to start up.

[mmichaels1970]

I /we need what’s on that computer for litigation for the all the lawsuits we’re fighting trying to defend our property

If worst comes to worst, you can purchase a hard drive transfer kit at Best Buy. You can pull your notebook hard drive, connect it to the kit, and connect it via USB to another computer. It will then act like a normal external drive, allowing you to pull whatever you need off of it.

The transfer kit costs about $40.

[norwaypinesavage]

"Reseat your ram."

Watch your language, or I'll hit the "Abuse" button!

[Faith65]

Just remembered- yesterday hubby was having an issue with 1 or 2 of the games camera cards not going into the slot correctly- eventually it worked ok and the card was put back into the game cam.

[Excellence]

Or if you already have a Passport or GoPro, you can pull the head off and attach it to your hard drive.

[TomGuy]

Owwwww.

I had similar happen to an $800 Samsung Win7 laptop about a 2 years ago. It was, of course, one month out of warranty. I would press the ON button, it would act like it was going to start and in about 3 seconds would go dead.

I took it to a local repair shop and they tried to get a replacement motherboard [the apparent problem]. Samsung apparently doesn’t make replacement parts.

I have an $800 SamJUNK doorstop.

It was the 2nd SamJUNK product I had with a short lifespan. I won’t waste money on anything with their name on it any more.

I hope you have better luck.

I replaced the SamJUNK laptop with a Dell laptop. The hard drive did start experience problems, corrupt files, etc. I replaced it locally with a new Western Digital hard drive. I used the recovery image disks to restore the Win7 OS and I used my own backed up image disks to restore the programs I had installed. The entire restore took about 2 hours with image disks.

[tacticalogic]

Did you have Bitlocker encryption enabled? If not the hard drive should work in another computer if it’s still good. You can get external drive enclosures that will let you connect it to another computer via the USB ports.

If Bitlocker was enabled, then it was encrypted by the TPM chip on that computer, and another computer won’t be able to read it.

[Faith65]

Good idea- thanks.

I am nervous to play with his computer- we are both stressed fighting the 6 lawsuits (over 5 years) and I don’t need any more problems-just tired. We each keep a lot of info on our laptops and one of mine crashed last week and I have left it alone until I can get to it this week.

[Faith65]

Hi- No bitlocker-

[tacticalogic]

Then you might want to investigate getting an external drive enclose that you can put the hard drive into and see if you can get the data off of it from another computer.

http://www.newegg.com/Hard-Drive-Enclosures/SubCategory/ID-92

[Faith65]

I played with the keys again more carefully- one of them was stuck on-

computer seems ok! Thank you for your help!

[Westbrook]

> It may be a stuck keyboard key. Even if the keys don’t
> appear stuck, your computer may think a key is being
> pressed.

According to what I’ve read, this is the most likely case.

There may be some debris that is wedging one of the keys in the keyboard.

Alternatively, you can remove the hard drive and connect it to another computer through the usb using this device.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812161002

It’s only about $34.

That should give you access to your data while you have your laptop fixed.

Oh, and don’t forget to buy a USB backup drive. You can get them for under $100. Worth every penny in a situation like yours.

[sheana]

Same thing recently happened to my desk top. Yep, memory stick replaced and all is well.