I recently bought a refurbished lenovo thinkstation P500 from a professional seller. I don’t get any video output however and on starting I get the following beeping error message: 2 long beeps - 3 short beeps - 2 very short beeps.
The GPU fan is spinning, all other fans are spinning and the CPU is heating up. There are no drives connected (am planning to install Truenas once I get it to post).
The thinkstation specs are:
CPU: Xeon E5-1630 V3
GPU: FirePro 3D Graphics
RAM: MTA36ASF2G72PZ-2G1B1RI (16GB - HP branded)
I have tried the following to solve the issue:
Switching cables
Switching monitors
Reseating the RAM
Reseating the GPU
Disconnecting all drives
Resetting CMOS
Does anyone have any suggestions on what to do next? All help would be greatly appreciated.
Also, could the fact that the RAM is branded “HP” be causing issues here?
Lenovo’s hardware maintenance manual says 2-long and 3-short beeps indicates a graphics card problem. But not sure what the “very short beeps” indicate. Nothing in the manual on it.
My first suggestion is to try a known good graphics card but I assume you would had done that already if you had one on-hand.
So try booting the PC with either the GPU or RAM removed (but not both at the same time). Does the beep sequence change?
PS. - I tried including a link to the service manual but since my account is brand new it’s blocking me. Google search “p500p700_hmm.pdf”
You are right, I have no extra graphics card or DDR4 ECC ram on hand to use for further testing I did however find the service manual you referenced.
Meanwhile the seller contacted me and advised me to put the ram in slot 7 on the memory board (while the manual and every other source I can find advises to use slot 1). I tested your suggestions and theirs with the following results:
No RAM: I immediately get an error code of 3 beeps and one very look beep (on loop)
No Graphics card:
RAM in slots 1-4 (see image): after about 20 seconds I get 2 beeps, 3 short beeps and 2 very short beeps (the original error)
RAM in slots 5-8 (see image): no error message
Graphics card installed:
RAM in slots 1-4 (see image): after about 20 seconds I get 2 beeps, 3 short beeps and 2 very short beeps (the original error) and no video out
RAM in slots 5-8 (see image): no error message but also no video out
So I’m assuming there might be either an issue with the RAM or with the motherboard itself?
From the troubleshooting you’ve preformed thus far, I’m leaning toward it being an issue with the video card or motherboard. Since you get a different beep sequence with the RAM removed it tells us the motherboard is detecting the memory. The modules you have are manufactured by Micron and not specific to HP. Lenovo also sells this exact same module (P/N: 46W0796) so I don’t think it’s a compatibility issue. It is however possible that one of them could be faulty. Try booting with only one module seated in slot 1. If you still get the same 2-long 3-short then I’d suggest trying to locate a spare video card next.
I think you are right, everything seems to point to a video card issue. When performing the tests with a keyboard plugged in my error beep code is exactly the 2-long 3-shor error code, which indicates a video card issue (the two very short beeps at the end disappeared).
The system came with only a single 16 gig ram stick so I can’t play around with that any further. But I will contact the seller and see if they can suggest a solution .
In an update, the Lenovo tech support advised to put the GPU in a different system, and I realised I still have an old AMD system lying around. I tried this and the GPU seems to work, I got video out without any problem.
When I use the graphics card in the P500 workstation however I still get the 2-long 3-short error message.
It’s going to be really tough to troubleshoot further without spare parts. It sounds less like the GPU is bad since it works in another system, but I personally wouldn’t rule it out until trying a known good card in your system. And if the PC still doesn’t post with the known good GPU then I’d try swapping the RAM and PSU before declaring the motherboard dead. Sorry, I know this doesn’t help when you don’t have parts…
Didn’t think to mention this before, but have you tried seating the GPU in slot #38?
Thank you again for the advice! Indeed, I tried to seat the GPU in slot 38 but this did not help either.
I got a new GPU in the mail today ( see pictures,
it was sent by the seller without informing me) and with this new GPU I had display out immediately!
Someone from lenovo support on the lenovo community mentioned that my FirePro graphics card was not UEFI compatible. I didn’t manage to test this on my new system (and am a little afraid to test now that the system is working), but I’ll try some things out on my old system to see if I can replicate the issue with the firepro on that system.
