What causes one loud continuous BEEP and system lock up?

[me]

Got a Dell Latitude D820, WXP, all service packs and drivers up to date.
Lately, no matter what I might be doing (even walking away and doing nothing
at all), the laptop will spontaneously freeze and there is a non-stop LOUD,
continuous beep. You can't even push the power button and shut down. Must
remove battery and/or unplug the stop the horrible noise. Sometimes it
happens after being on the laptop 5 minutes, other times it won't happen
until several hours have gone by.

I have done some Google searches and even basic hardware diagnostics to no
avail. Anybody ever hear of this? Any ideas?

 

[R. McCarty]

Over heating ? - there is a program specifically for Dell computers to help
monitor & control fans and sensors: http://www.diefer.de/i8kfan/index.html
As a alternative you can use SpeedFan 4.40:
http://www.almico.com/sfdownload.php

 

[SC Tom]

Got a Dell Latitude D820, WXP, all service packs and drivers up to date.
Lately, no matter what I might be doing (even walking away and doing
nothing
at all), the laptop will spontaneously freeze and there is a non-stop
LOUD,
continuous beep. You can't even push the power button and shut down.
Must
remove battery and/or unplug the stop the horrible noise. Sometimes it
happens after being on the laptop 5 minutes, other times it won't happen
until several hours have gone by.

I have done some Google searches and even basic hardware diagnostics to no
avail. Anybody ever hear of this? Any ideas?

There are a number of things that will cause those symptoms- a key stuck
down, bad memory, or overheating all will cause a continuous beep and
freezing. Although usually (but not always) overheating will shut it down.
Check inside and see if there is any dust build up, and if there is any,
remove it. Try disconnecting your hard drive and plugging it back in, and
removing and replacing the RAM. If you have any cards (Cardbus or whatever
your notebook uses), remove them and see if the problem reoccurs.
If you don't have any stuck keys, download Memtest86
http://www.memtest86.com/download.html , create the boot CD, and test your
RAM.

 

[db]

??

however, you might want
to try and posting the
question to the dell
community forums.

--

db·´¯`·...¸><)))º>
DatabaseBen, Retired Professional
- Systems Analyst
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- @hotmail.com
~~~~~~~~~~"share the nirvana" - dbZen

 

[William R. Walsh]

You should post to alt.sys.pc-clone.dell if you can do so.

My Latitude D800 let out a very long and unhappy beep that would not
stop after I spilled some water on the rug it was sitting on. I doubt if
you did that to your system, but if you did, get the battery out, unplug
the power cord *right now* and leave it to dry for a minimum of several
days!

Consider opening expansion card doors as well.

It wicked the water up into the system unit, as the carpet was deep pile
stuff. A few days in front of a fan fixed it, and everything has been
fine since.

It's very likely you have a bad system board if there is no other
obvious problem and diagnostics don't reveal anything. However, you
might want to try booting into another operating system (such as a Linux
Live CD) to see if the misbehavior persists.

Finally, try disconnecting any hardware plugged into the machine.
Perhaps an external device is causing problems.

William

 

[Toni]

Got a Dell Latitude D820, WXP, all service packs and drivers up to date.
Lately, no matter what I might be doing (even walking away and doing nothing
at all), the laptop will spontaneously freeze and there is a non-stop LOUD,
continuous beep. You can't even push the power button and shut down. Must
remove battery and/or unplug the stop the horrible noise. Sometimes it
happens after being on the laptop 5 minutes, other times it won't happen
until several hours have gone by.

I have done some Google searches and even basic hardware diagnostics to no
avail. Anybody ever hear of this? Any ideas?

It's most probably overheating. If not, it could be bad RAM.

How much RAM you have in your system?

 

[Jose]

Got a Dell Latitude D820, WXP, all service packs and drivers up to date.  
Lately, no matter what I might be doing (even walking away and doing nothing
at all), the laptop will spontaneously freeze and there is a non-stop LOUD,
continuous beep.  You can't even push the power button and shut down.  Must
remove battery and/or unplug the stop the horrible noise.  Sometimes it
happens after being on the laptop 5 minutes, other times it won't happen
until several hours have gone by.  

I have done some Google searches and even basic hardware diagnostics to no
avail.  Anybody ever hear of this?  Any ideas?  

Sounds like heat (too much). If you run a temperature monitoring
program, will you know how much is too much and what will you do if it
indicates overheating?

Just take it apart and give it a good cleaning (periodic maintenance).

Does it look like this picture?

http://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1GGLS_enUS332US332&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=Dell+Latitude+D820

There are links in the above article specific to your laptop, for
example, here is a service manual:

http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/latd820/en/sm/index.htm

I don't think it matters how much RAM you have but if you would like
to test it, you can do that too:

Run a test of your RAM with memtest86+ (I know it is boring and will
cost you a CD).

Memtest86+ is a more up to date version of the old memtest program and
they are not the same.

The memtest86+ will not run under Windows, so you will need to
download the ISO file and create a bootable CD, boot on that and then
run the memtest86+ program.

If even a single error is reported that is a failure and should make
you suspicious of your RAM.

If you have multiple sticks of RAM you may need to run the test on
them one at a time and change them out to isolate the failure to a
particular single stick. Always keep at least the first bank of RAM
occupied so the test will find something to do and there is enough to
boot your system.

Sometimes, reseating the RAM in the slots will relieve the error but a
failure is still cause for suspicion.

The file and instructions are here:

http://www.memtest.org/

If someone says to run memtest86, you can say that you know memtest86+
supercedes memtest86 and here's why:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memtest86