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Beeping...no display...oh my.

post #1 of 32
7/24/05 at 11:26pm
Thread Starter 
Specs:
Biostar M7NCD Pro
Athlon XP 3000+
Powercolor Radeon 9600 Pro 128MB
Thermaltake PurePower 420W
60GB 7200RPM Maxtor


Here's the story. My brother's PC is having problems with a few..maybe just one game. After playing for 20 minutes or so, the game will exit back to Windows, sometimes with an error message (the one where ms asks you if you want to report it) and sometimes no error message. He was not using the latest video card drivers, so I downloaded the latest ATI had to offer and installed them. Now it seems almost EVERY game he tries to play is exiting back to Windows at some point...all except Halo. Then I tried Omega's latest offering...no improvement. I then thought it could be the RAM since he was using 2 differnt types (1x512MB PC2700 Crucial, 1x512MB PC3200 Ultra). Before I took 1 stick out, I relized that I had one stick in slot 1 and the other in 2. If I put one of them in the 3rd slot, dual channel is supposed to work. So I moved one to the 3rd slot, and the other is in the first. Power it up, no display, and it (case speaker) is making a long beep (about 1 second), and about a 1.5 sec pause, then beeps a long beep again (repeats) I now try to boot with just one stick. Same thing. I look things over, and try some more. One of the times I turned it on it was beeping constantly (speaker constantly making sound) until I turned the PC off! What do these sounds mean? Nothing matched this in the Phoenix beep codes I looked up. So that's where I am now. Very productive.... Where do I begin?
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post #2 of 32
7/25/05 at 12:39am
unplug and take the CMOS battery out for a few mins..

are you using driver cleaner in between driver installs?

it should try booting even when there's RAM failure... have you tried both sticks in different slots? sometimes slot 1 isn't the one used for 1-stick configs..

2 different sticks won't run in dual channel btw..
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post #3 of 32
7/25/05 at 5:49am
Get the motherboards manual out (try online if you can't find it) and look up the beep codes, the mobo might have some proprietry rubbish (unlikely I know)

Has the vid card been overclocked and gone south of the border?
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post #4 of 32
7/25/05 at 12:00pm
i had this problem once, it turned out that there was somthing wrong with direct x. Maybe you could install the newest version again and see if that helps, it worked for me
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post #5 of 32
7/25/05 at 4:33pm
Thread Starter 
I just cleaned out the video card fan/heatsink. It had quite a bit of dust in it. There was also some dust in the AGP slot, so I cleaned it out...

I had reset the CMOS a few times before. This time I took out he battery for about an hour. I put the one Ultra stick in the first slot and it did not boot. I powered everything down and moved the stick to slot 2. I powered it up, logged into Windows; it works! Then I shut it down, then turned it on again, logged in, then shut it down to make sure it worked. Then I put the Crucial stick into slot 1. It powered on fine; I logged onto Windows, then it froze up. I could not do anything with the keyboard or mouse, so I pressed the reset button. Back to the no display, repetitive beeping. So I take out the crucial stick (slot 1) and turn it on. It appears to be back to normal. After posting a normal quick view of the temps, fan speeds, etc. the display goes black and just does nothing. The monitor has a signal. I turn it off, reset the CMOS with jumper, turn it back on, and there is no display and it is beeping again. Right now I am letting the battery set out incase the CMOS did not get cleared. Does this look like the mobo is going crazy or the memory?
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post #6 of 32
7/25/05 at 4:57pm
I am not familar with the BIOS on that board, but assuming it is an AWARD BIOS, 1 long beep like you described is the code for memory problems. Typically, especially in the situation you described where it occurred after moving memory around, it is simply improperly seated RAM. There is always the chance you statically damaged the chip, or even bent the pins in the slot though.
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post #7 of 32
7/25/05 at 6:44pm
I've had a mobo go crazy on me... It just had real issues booting (I reckon that the HDD controller went). It would stop halfway and stuff.

This sounds symptomatic of a motherboard issue.
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post #8 of 32
7/25/05 at 7:24pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Thunder_PC
I am not familar with the BIOS on that board, but assuming it is an AWARD BIOS, 1 long beep like you described is the code for memory problems. Typically, especially in the situation you described where it occurred after moving memory around, it is simply improperly seated RAM. There is always the chance you statically damaged the chip, or even bent the pins in the slot though.
Can statically damaged RAM partially work? (work for a little while, cause random lock-up, etc.) Or if it's damaged does it just not work at all?

I put the mobo battery back in place. It seems like the Crucial stick may be the problem. I put the Crucial stick in slot 2 (the same place the Ultra stick was working in (the Ultra stick is not installed at this time), and turned on the PC, made the 1 normal short beep, but I had no display signal at all.
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post #9 of 32
7/25/05 at 7:26pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by eskimo_socks
Has the vid card been overclocked and gone south of the border?
It's never been overclocked or modified.
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post #10 of 32
7/26/05 at 5:03am
I've just re-read what you said.

Slot One - Nothing Works
Slot Two - Ultra Works

Either
Slot 1 (and possibly other stuff on the mobo) has died
The Crucial Memory has died (it has a lifetime warranty dosen't it)
Both have died (was the Crucial Memory in slot one in the first place)

Try plugging the memory in to slots 2 and 3 and see what happens.
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post #11 of 32
7/26/05 at 9:09pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jordan1
Can statically damaged RAM partially work? (work for a little while, cause random lock-up, etc.) Or if it's damaged does it just not work at all?
Just certain chips (or a single chip on the module) can go bad. When that happens, it can potentially "partially work". It will seem OK until that particular area of the memory is writen to. If in doubt, use the stick you get to sometimes work and run memtest on it. http://www.memtest.org/ It is a very complete piece of memory diagnostic software.
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post #12 of 32
7/29/05 at 1:31pm
Thread Starter 
I just put the Crucial in slot 2 and the Ultra in slot 3. Powered on, it makes the normal short beep, and displays on the top of the monitor "Radeon 9600 Pro Samsung 128MB B80613.05060" with a blue blinking underline above it (_). It just sits there like this until I restart it 5 minutes later. Now it shows the screen that looks like I just reset the CMOS (says the settings have been reset to there defualts, I'm running a Athlon 1300, etc.) So I go into the bios settings by pressing Del, change the 100MHz CPU frequency to 166MHz, press enter, and whole screen goes completely blue. I restart the PC, no display, same beeping.
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post #13 of 32
7/29/05 at 11:48pm
Near the beginning you said something about PC2700 and dual channel. PC2700 can't be dual channel, or at least I've never heard of that before. Do you have dual channel enabled in the bios??
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post #14 of 32
7/30/05 at 7:53pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by dman22
Near the beginning you said something about PC2700 and dual channel. PC2700 can't be dual channel, or at least I've never heard of that before. Do you have dual channel enabled in the bios??
I never disabled or enabled anything for dual channel, but I thought the sticks were capable of doing it, but I am really not for sure. hmmmm...
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post #15 of 32
7/30/05 at 11:10pm
I've had a couple vodka and pepsi's (vanilla), but I'm almost positive there's something on my IC-7G that enables dual channel. Just go through your bios and make sure there isn't something checked, because I'm still 99.999999% positive PC2700 can't do dual channel.
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post #16 of 32
7/30/05 at 11:26pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by dman22
I've had a couple vodka and pepsi's (vanilla), but I'm almost positive there's something on my IC-7G that enables dual channel. Just go through your bios and make sure there isn't something checked, because I'm still 99.999999% positive PC2700 can't do dual channel.
OK, I'll look into that. Thanks.
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post #17 of 32
7/31/05 at 2:42am
RAM speed has absolutely nothing to do with being able to run dual channel. PC2700 can run dual channel just as well as PC1600, 2100, 2400, 3200, 4000, etc. That being said, you still wan't to make sure you are not in dual channel mode. For dual channel to work properly, it is best to use two identical sticks of RAM.
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post #18 of 32
7/31/05 at 8:13pm
Thread Starter 
OK, now neither of the sticks will boot at all; I tried each stick separately in slot one and slot two; no display and same beeping. I tried reseting the BIOS and that did not work so I took out the battery to make sure it was reset...still no luck. I also tried sticking in a working FX5200 video card and that was not it. Is my motherboard going bad?
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post #19 of 32
7/31/05 at 11:19pm
Again, the beep code (long beep, pause, long beep) is telling you it is a memory problem. This doesn't mean it has to be the sticks. It could be the memory controller or the slots themselves, but reseating the video card with that beep code is useless. Try the memory in another PC if possible, or try another stick in that PC. That will let you know if it is the sticks or something on the board.
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post #20 of 32
8/1/05 at 10:37am
Thread Starter 
I installed a working (pulled from another PC) stick of PC2100 in slot 2. I powered it on and it made the normal short beep and booted up to the Biostar logo and stopped. (nothing else was displayed before this) I restarted the PC and reset the CMOS with the same result. I moved the stick to slot 2 and the same thing happens.
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