So while I was going through one of  Professor Messor his CompTIA A+ training videos, the computer I was working on started to make a beeping sound and I saw an orange light flashing. If it weren’t stressing me out right now, (I’m broke) it would be funny I mean what better way is there to test what I’ve learned so far, huh?

Well a quick Google search taught me that each BIOS manufacturer has his own list of beep codes. So step one is to check who the manufacturer of the BIOS is, I could restart the computer, but I am lazy and impatient .

There is a way, of checking who your BIOS manufacturer is without restarting your pc. You can do this by using a command line program called dmidecode .  A command line program(or utility) is a piece of software that can only be opened  in, and/or used through the terminal.

How to install dmidecode

• open terminal
• log in as root
• type “yum install dmidecode” (without the quotation marks)

At one point during the installation you will be asked to type “Y” or “N”, type “Y”.

So now we have dmidecode installed, let’s check who the BIOS manufacturer is.

• make sure you are still logged in as root
• type “dmidecode –type 0”

Et voilà, there is the name of the vendor!

As you can see in my case the vendor is “American Megatrends Inc.”, according to their AMI beep code list, one beep refers to “DRAM refresh failure” which means “The programmable interrupt timer or programmable interrupt controller has probably failed”

So I have a problem with my DRAM……. Hmmm, now what?

Well, I guess I have to check what kind of RAM I have.

• type in terminal ” dmidecode –type 17″

(Warning, this message shows the info per piece of RAM that’s installed. I have four pieces of RAM installed, and the picture above shows info about the first piece only! (I didn’t want to bore you with a large picture). So don’t forget to scroll down to check the info of all the RAM’s!)

So I have 4 pieces of DDR2,  each with the size of 1024 MB  and a speed of 800 MHz.

So now what?

Edit:

While typing the tutorial, I took a look at the backside of my tower and there are two circles behind it, I think those are vents. Or one of them is I think, I swiped it with my hand only to get an almost “Mano Negra” so much dust !

When  continuing with this tutorial the beep eventually stopped and the fan is less noisy but the orange light is still flashing…. I am pretty sure the thing always flashed, so I think I am going to leave it at this.

And yes, I am not only lazy but also gross. My ex-boyfriend, a total Alpha-male, once said about my keyboard:”Roja, your keyboard is gross, not just gross but really gross”. Ya’ll know, when an Alpha-male tells you something is gross, it really is gross