Hi! Let me begin with my specs. Dell Dimension 4400 (I know. I'm sorry too) XP Home Edition 250 watt power supply (underated) P4 Northwood 2.4 (upgraded fr P4 Willamette 1.7) Intel 845D Motherboard 20 GB Maxtor 7200 rpm drive 24X NEC burner Standard Floppy drive 256 MB Micron ddr266 Sound Blaster Live value p.c.i. 4X AGP Leadtek ti4200 128mb (upgraded fr stock Dell branded Geforce 2 MX) This is a long story. Hope you can stick around. I bought the pc in April of 2002. It ran flawlessly for several months. In October, I replaced the Dell vid card with a Leadtek ti4200. It continued to run perfectly until I upgraded the cpu from the P4 1.7 to a P4 2.4 ghz. It continued to run perfect until a week later when the monitor screen suddenly went blank. After that it wouldn't post or display video, but it did have power as all systems fans were running. At Dell's request I had the vid card tested and it was fine. Then they decided to replace the board. That didn't work. Then they replaced the processor. But my system still didn't boot. Next I decided to try removing one of the ram modules (256*2) and to my surprise the pc started fine. But when I tried that same stick in a friend's pc it worked fine. Weird I thought but at least my pc is back up. Well it worked fine for a few days but then started to randomly go to a black screen again several times per day. Only this time the system would reboot fine. When I reported this to Dell they had me reinstall XP home cuz it was a new motherboard. The behavior continued regardless. Then the next day the screen went blank again and now it won't post. Same behavior as the first time it died. But now I'm getting 3 long beeps. This indicates a memory problem for Dell systems. So Dell shipped a new stick. I put it in Alone and it doesn't work in either Slot. Other working ram also doesn't work. I also swapped the cpu with a known good cpu and still no boot. I've had it with this piece of junk! I've come here for help because the Dell reps I've dealt with seem clueless. What do you guys think could be the problem? Could this be a bad power supply? It strikes me as such, but Dell doesn't think so. Or is the board fried? Thank you all.

the memory controller might be bad or ps but removing a ram chip shouldn't make a difference on the ps. and it would be rare to have same problem on 2 mbs unless it is the ram causing the mb to fail, super-extra-likeneverhappens rare. new ram stick should be tested. try 400 W ps w/ p4 extra power connector. if it doesn't work all of your ram is s*** and/or mb is s***. Don't know what else to say other than what were you thinking to buy PC from Dell. Esp. gaming rig quality.

I know it is the last thing, but I am thinking power supply. Since the ps has several diffrent outputs, it could be that the output for the memory voltage has intermittant problems. good luck jim f