I have a Gateway desktop on my network with a couple hard drives in it to use on my network as a backup system. Yesterday I turned it on and it wouldn’t boot up.
It made one beep. It would go to the Gateway Logo. Restart. No beep. Go to the logo. Freeze up. The power button light would slowly blink on and off.
I couldn’t go into Safe Mode or into the BIOS settings. I did get into the BIOS settings once but it froze up on the first page.
Note: For safety reasons unplug the power supply first. I did it every time necessary even if I don't specifically state so.
The next step was to go digging around inside the case. I unhooked all the cables. Tried to start her up. No change.
I took out the video card. No change. At this point I had the computer hooked up to a monitor using the built in VGA plugin.
I removed the CMOS battery. Then started it again. No change.
I removed the memory chips that caused it to beep continuously which I considered a good sign. But when the chips where placed in again. No beep, No boot. This should have raised all kinds of red flags in my mind but it didn’t. At this time I was also searching online for other possible solutions.
I left it till this morning. I unplugged everything again. This time I also unplugged the power cord from the motherboard then plugged it back in alone. Started up the system, same continuous beeping.
Turned off and unplugged the power and then inserted one of the memory chips.
I have 6GB of memory on this system. Two chips. One 4GB and the other 2GB. I put the 4Gb one in first. Plugged in the power. Started up the system. No beeps, no boot.
Took that one out and inserted the second one. It started booting up. I hooked up my hard drive. Plugged in the power. Started up the system. The system is booting up again.
Problem solved. A bad memory chip. Sadly, it was the 4GB chip that went bad leaving me with just 2GB. The system is a bit slower now but its good enough for what I use it for.