1-3-3-1 beeps when shutting down?

[lukaszsw]

I've got this strange beep message when I tried to reboot my W500. I was using Intel power saving graphics when it happend. The screen turned black, it stared beeping as it was from motherboard internal speaker. It went like this 1 beep, 3 beeps, 3 beeps, 1 beep. I looked briefly at the manual troubleshooting section but it seems only to list error messages from PC Doctor.

Can anybody tell me if I've got a some problems with my machine?

It happened twice already but I didn't notice any other issues.

[andyP Community SuperMod · Accepted solution]

According to the Hardware Maintainance Manual, (pdf page 52), the beep code is a RAM (memory) or mainboard failure.

I suggest re-seating your memory, (pdf page 78), and testing it with memtest86. Whatever the results, I would call support.

Edit; Typo

[lukaszsw]

Thanks Andy! Well, I need this machine for another week so lets hope, fingers crossed, that it will not die on me.

[archon810]

I got my W500 last week and it already did it to me once. Exact same sequence. Btw, the manual does mention it, you just have to dig through to find it.

Another reason why I won't feel too bad about returning mine.

[edros]

Here is a simple solution that worked for me. It seems that a small round piece of tape that is used for wire management was interfering with the upper dimm slot.  The tape rolled over and blocked some of the dimm pin connections. After removing the tape and continually reseating the memory chip to ensure good contact and remove some of the sticky residue left behind from the tape the beeping errors went away.

Hope this helps a stupid issue go away!!!