Prev: Why is XP VPN client limited to 28kbs?
Next: Sound Schemes » Altering, etc. (XP Professional)
From: Toni on 17 Feb 2010 10:34
"me" wrote...
> 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?


From: Jose on 17 Feb 2010 16:57
On Feb 16, 1:09 pm, me <m...(a)discussions.microsoft.com> wrote:
> 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
First  |  Prev  | 
Pages: 1 2
Prev: Why is XP VPN client limited to 28kbs?
Next: Sound Schemes » Altering, etc. (XP Professional)