Lynn,
I used to get 1 Long and 3 Short beeps followed by a black screen almost
every cold boot. I am quite certain it's a video issue. I and a friend who
had the same problem had upgraded to powerful, gaming type, video cards. I
could get past it by holding the power switch to shut down, and immediately
rebooting. Sometimes I had to do this 3 times. Once it was booted, it ran
perfectly. I read a great deal about the problem. I know that it is common
and can involve various brand names, but never found a reason for it. The
440BX MB eventually failed, the capacitors swollen and leaking. I replaced
it with a more recent version of the same MB (with different capacitors)
and have not had the problem since. Based on intuition rather than science,
I made an assumption that powerful video cards can tax the power
capabilities of some early systems, especially during the bootup phase. I'm
guessing that newer MB's and PS's have more power reserve and this problem
will disappear. In the meantime, no manufacturers seem to admit it's
existence. So my guess is: Try a cheap, low tech video card and the beeps
will stop. Get a newer MB & PS and you'll be able to use any video card.
This includes a lot of guesswork on my part, and there may be others who
know more. Good luck, Bob


>Hope someone here knows what this is....
>I've been scouring the 'net but come up empty-handed. It's:
>1 - long, followed by 3 short, beeps. I still get the regular, single POST
>beep just before my splash screen starts.
>
>I even listened over & over to be sure it wasn't 1-2-1..... it's
>definitely 1 long, 3 short.
>It's the Dell Dim. XPS-T 450. I now have a Powerleap Celeron 1.3Ghz in it
>as well as a Promise controller for my 100GB HD. Have a DVD & CD-burner,
>too. Original Voodoo3 (I have a Geforce 3 to go in but don't want to add
>to the stew).  Board is Intel (440BX), BIOS is Phoenix 4.0-6.  I'm flashed
>to the last BIOS available from Dell, A11.
>I've reseated the memory & video card. Tried it with Sandra, Hot CPU Test
>Lite (6 hour test/burn-in/"defect-detect"), PCPitstop-- all say there's
>nothing wrong. What is going on here?  It's disturbing because I can't
>find this code & worry about my data either being corrupted at some point
>or the whole deal possibly going down- what is this code???
>Hope someone here from PCBuilders can help- or another person who's been
>through this?
>Thank you for your time & interest,   Lynn Tracy