PC Is Going To Sleep Upon Startup

A woman brought me her desktop computer. She said when she starts it up it starts beeping and then goes into Sleep Mode. Research Online indicates it might be a driver issue. One person claims to have solved the problem by cleaning off the motherboard. Overheating and dust?

This is a “Lenovo ThinkCentre M12P” Desktop.

So the first thing I had to do was figure out how to open this case. I found a YouTube video here: Lenovo ThinkCentre M92p M91p Teardown

There is a blue switch on the back that I had to slide and hold and then open from the top.

The cover comes up from the front but is connected at the back with a hinge, like lifting the hood of a car.

It was pretty clean inside but I noticed a big problem and was puzzled how it happened. There are four memory chips and two were not plugged in. The two that were plugged in were in backwards so they didn’t go all the way into the memory slot.

Anyway, I seated all the memory chips and hoped they were not damaged. To access the memory chips I first had to remove the hard drive bracket. This one was blue plastic with no screws. I had to push on the tab on the outside edge and lift it.

I had to take off the front panel first (three plastic clips along the top edge of the case).

The DVD bay also had a tab on the outside edge that I had to push in and lift.

There was not much dust but I did use some compressed air to blow out around the CPU and fan. I made sure all the cables were tight and the memory chips were secure. Then I put everything back together. Hooked it up and it booted up with no problem – no beeps and no sleeping.

I ran Microsoft’s memory checker just to be sure the chips were OK. No problems were detected.

How To Test Your Computer’s Memory

When she picked up her computer she told me she tried to fix it herself. That explains the memory chips. I believe that the original problem was that the memory chips needed to be seated again. Technically, she fixed it halfway by removing the chips but didn’t know how to put them back in.

The only other problem I noticed was when I plugged in the power cord to test the computer. The power adapter seemed very loose. The reason was obvious. No screws were holding in the power supply. Not one. Luckily I had some spares.

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