Thread: Dell Laptop powers on some of the time

I have a Dell Inspiron 1100 Laptop with specs:
Win XP Pro
2.0 Ghz Intel Celeron Proc
20gb HDD
256 MB RAM
16 MB Vid Card
Phoenix BIOS
And it seems that the laptop will only power on sometimes. Most of the time, when I go to turn it on, it will beep 4 times: Three short beeps, a pause and then another short beep. The laptop seems to then continue to boot, but I get no video on either the LCD or an attached monitor.

I've read that this may be the "3-1" beep code for Phoenix BIOS, which means motherboard failure. This is strange because when the laptop does power on (I have to try a bunch of times), windows seems to boot fine and everything looks to be working.

Does anyone have any ideas on why this might be happening?

hi! u've got an old system. three things can cause ur system to beep 1. the Memory is bad. 2. the CMOS battery is weak. 3. ur keyboard has some thicky keys