Dell - Beeps when memory is replaced

Gerb68

I have upgraded and replaced RAM in many a PC. One annoying thing that I have come accross is that when this tried in a Dell PC, 8 out of 10 times it results in the dreaded beeps.
It is not that the memory is seated incorrectly and experience has told me to only attempt an upgrade with exactly the same type and speed of RAM but still the same beeps.
Even resetting the CMOS results in the beeps.
It also occurrs when Intrusion Detection is disabled in the BIOS.

Has anyone else come accross this and if so did you find a fix?
Any Ideas wecome.

Thanx for any help!

Solitaire

Is the machine working? If not I wonder if it really needs ECC rather than normal non-ECC modules...

Gerb68

I'm talking in General. Like I said it happens in 8 out of 10 dells I have had to upgrade or reinstall RAM.

I am trying this on a dell C521 at the moment which has four DIMM slots and is capable of up to 4 Gbs of RAM.
Two DIMM slots have 512mb of DDR2-667 and it Beeps when I install any DDR2-667 in the other two DIMM slots (1Gb x2 or 512mb x2).

This always happens.

deceit

Have you tried the 667 gig sticks by themselfs? I dont like dell pc's myself but have installed ram in quite a few and never had problems with them beeping, just tried there with ram in my gf's old one just to be sure and worked perfect . One point though some motherboards can be picky about mixing ram sizes. I had a 939 gigabyte board that wouldnt let me mix ram sizes always had to reset cmos when tried.

Gerb68

I have tried the sticks in all cofigurations.

What I'm talking about can happen like this;

Say you have a Dell with two 512mbs of RAM.
And you take one stick of RAM out.
It will boot up but with beeps and no display.
If you stick that same stick of RAM back in
It will boot fine.

I have had this numerous times and it seems to be mainly with Dells. It seem like there is some Jumper somewhere that needs resetting.

MunsterCycling

You do know that the slots match 1+3 2+4

Is that how you are installing them?

Gerb68

Yeah. Even do, I think Dell boards are the only ones with slots not coloured to indicate this.

I've experienced this for a while and kept putting off asking around if others had come accross the problem. When you take my above example of removing one of two 512 Dimms it wont boot then put it back in then it does boot. Dimm slots and other configs shouldn't matter.


I got this from the Dell support forum:
"It is not so much the exact type of memory but the manufacturer of the memory that Dells are picky about. This is why most will recommend Crucial memory for Dell systems as it is guaranteed to work. C521 memory found HERE. Sometimes installing the new memory modules in one at a time by themselves with the older memory out will give you success. After installing one of the new memory modules, reboot the system to see if it starts without any issues."

jasonb

All of the PCs in my company are Dell and I've recently been upgrading the RAM in a lot of them. We got the replacement RAM from Dell, but I still sometimes get those beeps.

In general, either reseating the RAM, or installing them one at a time, has fixed the problem. I've never had an issue that hasn't been ok after a couple of attempts, thankfully...

J.

Gerb68

The answer seems to be down to installing one at a time. Thanx to all that replied