Gateway DX4300 two beeps error

[bahearn81]

My Desktop Gateway DX4300 has twice froze on me in the past week, giving me two short beeps at the startup followed by it's regular one short beep. It then never boots up correctly. I looked up the bios version and it says it's a "memory parity error" so I cleaned out a lot of dust and after that it worked again and I thought everything was fine until today. I came back from a break and it had frozen again, and when restarted gave me the same two beeps error. F#@%! So I took out all four 2-gig memory modules and reinserted them, and though it still didn't work the first few reboots its now miraculously working again. Something else to note: each time I've gotten it back and running the date is reset to 2009 and the time is several hours off. Could this be a battery issue? So how can I prevent this from happening again, which seems inevitable Thank you.

Also I've already had the original power supply replaced so I don't think that's it.

 

[abekl]

Sounds like two things could be going on. One is that you need to replace the CMOS battery in your system. That would account for the lost time/date. Second, is the memory parity error. It could be related to the first problem but maybe not. You have to change the battery first to find out. If changing the battery doesn't solve it, them you've got RAM that's gone bad and needs to be replaced.

 

[bahearn81]

Thanks! I'm wondering to replace the battery will I need to take any steps first like saving bios settings? I haven't done any custom changes on this machine. Or can I simply just shut down, unplug cables and replace the battery then simply turn on again? It's been about a day since I had to reboot several times until I no longer had the two beep error and I've shutdown and restarted a few times just to see what happens. So far it's come on every time, would this still mean it could be the battery?

 

[bahearn81]

And why would a dying CMOS battery allow the computer to freeze while I'm using it? Wouldn't it only give me issues when I reboot? Just curious. thanks agian.

 

[abekl]

You don't need to take any steps before replacing the battery, other than disconnecting the PC from the power first and observing common anti-static safeguards. The fact that your problem is intermittent says that the battery is just failing.

 

[bahearn81]

Best answer selected by bahearn81.

 

[nikorr]

This topic has been closed by Nikorr.