# Dell dimension beep codes



## SUNDANCE45 (Sep 2, 2011)

Found this site one late night of working on my machines and almost throwing my Dell out the window. So, some 
truth and comedy on the forum that lead to find my diagnostic DELL BIOS BEEP CODE 5-1-2-3
Please see the link below and revert. 
I referred to code 5-1-2-3
Which in this case was to the memory needing to be reseatted, I mixed mine around into different slots all my memory the same on my board though "caution yours". I pull the plug on power to board also and also always take out and or replace system battery and reset to ensure BIOS trips this and doesn't recur...when have these sort of headaches which in fact just received agp graphics card from BESTBUY (hard to find AGP, with dinosaur)
about two weeks ago, so one headache to the next.

Please make sure to unplug machine and let sit for a few minutes to an hour to dissipate energy for static reasons, or if your like me, open it up and just work on it and say the heck with it all. No seriously, or flip the reset from 115 to 230 back to 115 just to make sure if trip, but unplug it anyway of course before working.

P.S. There is a lot of mixed impressions of BIOS on the web and do's and dont's. DELL has its' own BIOS manufacturing codes from their integration of system devices and some threads mark this and others mention no. So, my conclusion is BIOS is different BEEP codes for various platforms they have done off the shelf manufacturing in the last decade plus. Mine is a 2003 model up to par.

http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/ws340/en/ug/codes.htm

*Code*
*Cause*
1-1-2
Microprocessor register failure
1-1-3
NVRAM read/write failure
1-1-4
ROM BIOS checksum failure
1-2-1
Programmable interval timer
1-2-2
DMA initialization failure
1-2-3
DMA page register read/write failure
1-3
Video memory failure
1-3-1
through
2-4-4
Memory modules not being properly identified or used
3-1-1
Slave DMA register failure
3-1-2
Master DMA register failure
3-1-3
Master interrupt mask register failure
3-1-4
Slave interrupt mask register failure
3-2-2
Interrupt vector loading failure
3-2-4
Keyboard controller failure
3-3-1
NVRAM power loss
3-3-2
NVRAM configuration
3-3-3
Real-time clock (RTC) or keyboard controller not found
3-3-4
Video memory failure
3-4-1
Video initialization failure
3-4-2
Video retrace failure
3-4-3
Search for video ROM failure
4-2-1
Timer tick failure
4-2-2
Shutdown failure
4-2-3
Gate A20 failure
4-2-4
Unexpected interrupt in protected mode
4-3-1
Memory failure above address 0FFFFh
4-3-3
Timer-chip channel 2 failure
4-3-4
Time-of-day clock stopped
4-4-1
Serial or parallel connector failure
5-1-2-3
Memory read/write failure
5-2-2-1
Mismatch or unsupported memory modules
5-2-2-2
Mismatch memory module pair
5-2-2-3
Unable to initialize memory modules


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## Mumbodog (Oct 3, 2007)

You have a bad memory module, it needs to be identified and replaced with a new one.

Run a memory tester
http://www.memtest.org/

Download the prebuilt ISO, burn it to CD as an Image (not data), boot from that CD and run the memory test. If you get errors with this test you have a bad memory module, if you have more than one memory module installed remove all but one module and re-run the test, test each module individually until you find the bad one.


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