XPS 400 Having Strange Problems

[Sturalke]

A few months ago I got an XPS 400 off of a friend of mine as well as some memory, a hard drive with Windows 8 installed, and a GT 610 to use with it. Somewhere down the line I was supplied with the slightly better Quadro FX 3700. Recently, I purchased a bunch of computer parts from someone on Craigslist including an Asus P5N-E SLI motherboard and a Core 2 Quad Q9400 to go with it. I took a few parts from my Dell and went to put them inside this new case and it seems I carelessly fried the motherboard. After that, I decided I could tough it out for a few months using my Dell the way it was while I earn more money. Sadly, it seems that the XPS 400 took a turn for the worse in the day or so that I haven't used it.

After hours of trying different things such as new memory and checking the DIMM slots individually I still couldn't get the darned thing to POST. I even tested my power supplies and used whatever instructions I could find to check voltages on the board itself. No luck, they were all working normally.

I finally got it to POST this afternoon with memory only in the 2nd and 4th DIMM slots, a Pentium D 820, brand new thermal grease, and a borrowed video card. I borrowed a Geforce 8400 GS from a friend to help with troubleshooting. After finally getting it to POST I realized that there wasn't any video output to the monitor, but I had definitely heard the two short beeps that indicated a failed test. Typically, I would get one because I had removed the original CPU fan due to it's incredibly excessive noise level. I can't tell what it does say because there is no video output. I can, however, navigate the BIOS settings from memory. All the peripherals have successfully connected minus the monitor, but the error lights 1, 2, and 3 appear on the front of the case. I can't be sure what this means.

I've tried searching everywhere I could and couldn't find an answer to my problem. Can you guys help?

 

Dell XPS 400 containing:

Pentium D 820

non-original Corsair fan for CPU

Quadro FX 3700 or 8400 GS

2x2GB of Nanya NT2GT64U8HD0BY-AD DDR2 memory

Western Digital WD3200BEKX

everything else is original

 

TL;DR

Error lights 1, 2, and 3 are on after POST with no video output but access to BIOS settings. Two memory slots are malfunctioning.

[Guest]

Do you have another PCI-E slot you can insert the GPU into? If so, see if that gets it to at least output anything to the monitor. If not, try and disconnect the GPU all together as well as just using 1 stick of RAM and see if you still get the same error messages.

[Guest]

Also, this post on the Dell forums may help you: http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/desktop/w/desktop/3624.beep-codes-and-psa-diagnostic-chart

[Sturalke]

Also, this post on the Dell forums may help you: http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/desktop/w/desktop/3624.beep-codes-and-psa-diagnostic-chart

 

Thanks, I took a look over here and I can confirm that the 1st and 3rd DIMM slots are just downright broken, but that's fine. Today, I got in a new graphics card I ordered for cheap, a PNY 550 TI, and somehow this fixed my video problems. I'm not sure why since the other two cards I used work in other computers. The fact is that is works now.