[SOLVED] A friend gave me a Dell XPS 600 desktop computer. It had 2GB of RAM and I wanted to upgrade to 8GB. I bought four 2GB sticks of Crucial Memory off eBay, new form China, I don’t know if that makes a difference. I installed the memory and the computer beeped when I turned it on. It was 4 beeps with a one or two second pause and then 2 more beeps. I checked to make sure the memory was seated correctly and the computer beeped again. Then I thought I would try one stick at a time to see if any of the new memory was bad. The memory slots on the motherboard are numbered 1 through 4. I placed the stick in the number one slot. It beeped with all four sticks. Every time with the same pattern. I then installed the old memory into the computer and that beeped also, again with the same pattern. I then installed one stick at a time and all four sticks beeped. I did a Google search for the Dell BIOS beep pattern and found four beeps mean there is a memory problem. I could not find anything about the pause and the second two beeps. Does anyone know what might be causing this problem?
recheck to be sure the memory is seated all the way in, some of those newer memory slots have only one clip on one side and they can be harder to seat, At worse pull the motherboard out of the case and try seating the memory against a hard surface, you'll be able to see if it's seated properly too. Place the board on a non-conductive surface and connect keyboard, video and the power supply. Temporarily jump out PWR front panel pins to see if it'll post
have a real hard look at the mobo, especially capicitators.it should boot if you restored the old situation, unless some capicitator committed harakiri. look for bulges, bursts,anything suspicious.. some capicitators are just crap. they use 5cts stuff instead of 25cts stuff just to save money.unless you can replace them yourself, it may be useless if you find something wrong in this old beastie, sorry..
first make sure u have the correct mem for that dell is it none buffer low density or high density if u have the correct mem then return it back to the seller he gave u bad mem.
Yeah I'm with @nodnar . Have a really good look at the motherboard capacitors. Look for any buldge or leak. The motherboard & slots may be dirty. Blow the dust with a compressor (or can of compressed air). You can also dust off dirt with a fine paint brush. Spray some contact cleaner on the ram slots & ram contacts then try the original working piece of ram again. I assume you didn't touch the cpu. If you did, a bent/broken pin can cause ram issues as well...
Maybe too high Voltage for the new RAM, which would end up in some resistors burned. Hard to see because those resistors are very tiny/small! If you didn't have any knowledge about such repairs, don't try on your own!! Take the MB to a shop which is repairs MB's! Upfront you should just try following, after checking the Voltage needed and set for that new RAM: use a soft Pencil Rubber and clean the Feets of the RAM Modules with it, use an 'old' toothbrush and Cleaning Alcohol for to clean the RAM Socket inside. That maybe works if you've luck!
Clear up the CMOS first , by removing the CMOS battery, removing the power cable and holding the power button down for at least 10 seconds . I have come across this kind of issue many times and clearing up the CMOS used to do the trick - when the RAM are compatible.
DELL XPS 600 Up to 2GB Dual-Channel DDR2 SDRAM (667MHz, 2 or 4 DIMMs) Up to 2GB Dual-Channel DDR2 SDRAM (533MHz, 2 or 4 DIMMs) Simply the dell XPS 600 BIOS doesn't support more then 2GB.
It’s alive!! Thank you Joe C and Hadron-Curious, the motherboard came out easily with the help of the manual. I did all the testing with motherboard out of the case but it beeped all the way through. I thought for sure I cracked the motherboard or damaged it in some way. I came back here to say it's dead when I saw Hadron-Curious’s post. I removed the battery, drained the power, and it came back to life! Thanks again to everyone who replied
Actually the Manual states: So I think they mean is that you can install 2gb memory per slot, with 4 slots making for a total of 8gb memory, But only 2gb for x32 and 8gb for x64