BEEP BEEP BEEP.......NOTHING HAPPENS.

[TURIN]

Help Please.

We are having some building work done at home and this afternoon while I was out, the electrician told Mrs T the power needs to go off.

For some bizarre reason, realising the home theatre PC was on, she pressed the sleep button on the remote and then just hit the 'off' button for 5 seconds until it went off!

Now, I come home from work and.... "Er, the PC won't restart, it just beeps".

Great!

So, I have spent a couple of hours trying to fix the damn thing, here's the symptoms.
On power up, the LED lights up, the monitor (TV) goes to black screen, the fans run, the DVD drive runs, screen then goes to 'no signal' mode and the machine beeps repeatedly, no pattern.

I can't get into the bios by pressing F1, F8 or F10. Nothing.

OS is Windows 7.

Gigabyte Motherboard
ACE 400X PSU


I've removed and reseated the RAM and checked all the leads are connected to hard drives etc.

I've searched the google world and a few old threads on here.

PSU or motherboard blown perhaps?

Any advice to aid troubleshooting appreciated.

[Jhieminga]

Have you checked the manual for the motherboard? I'm not familiar with Gigabyte boards but the pattern of beeps used to be the way to tell which part was misbehaving in situations like these.

[bgbazz]

subject

Originally Posted by Jhieminga

Have you checked the manual for the motherboard? I'm not familiar with Gigabyte boards but the pattern of beeps used to be the way to tell which part was misbehaving in situations like these.

This is a real long shot, but has worked for me in the past....

Unplug everything to do with the system...and I mean everything!
Leave it unplugged for about 30 minutes or so and when you are certain that the power supply is back on and stable, plug everything back in, bit by bit, until everything is connected...then and only then, start pressing the 'on' buttons.

Try it and fingers crossed, it will work for you.

[ChocksAwayChaps]

Yep, unplugging everything for about half an hour has worked for me, too, in the past.

[TURIN]

Thanks for the replies.
I got hold of my brother just now who, to be fair, has forgotton more about PCs than I will ever know.
He suggested trying the RAM one stick at a time in each slot.

It worked first time.

I have a bad RAM stick. Fortunately, the system will run on 2gb instead of the full 4.

Happy bunny.

Off to buy a new stick of RAM and r-kid a couple of beers.

[ExSp33db1rd]

Yep, unplugging everything for about half an hour has worked for me, too, in the past.

Same thing happened to our TV last week, ( nothing to do with a computer, just a TV and adjacent decode box plugged into it. ) nothing I did removed the No Signal message until .... went to bed in frustration, pulled the TV ( only ) plug out of the wall and in the morning the TV worked perfectly as if nothing had happened.

I guess this is Harold Wilsons " White Hot Heat of Technology " ( for those in the UK who may remember that remark )

Should mankind have invented the wheel, I occasionally ask myself ?

Town Criers of the World - Unite.

[lomapaseo]

I have always associated black screen beeps with some critical hardware not working way before the machine boots into windows and starts looking for stuff you added later.

With me I get a low res message on the monitor along with the beep if its's saying a HD is missing (not a biggie if the OS is on another HD). But I suspect that in your case it can't even get that far into the BIOS so I also suspect a memory problem (bad stick) or something real early in the boot is bad.

How about the fan on the mother board if it doesn't spin up in the initial seconds?

[TURIN]

It's definately the RAM.

[TURIN]

Well this is getting to be an anuual event.
Similar problem again, only this time the machine died on me while I was streaming music.
It was very hot when I opened it up,
It won't boot. All the fans run, the hard drive seems to run and I get one beep then it just sits there humming. I can't get into the bios either.

I've tried swapping the RAM sticks out one by one but this time no dice. Unless they are both bad!

Could it be the BIOS Battery? It's not been replaced since I got the the motherboard changed about 7 years ago.

Any help appreciated.

[GordonR_Cape]

I think this time you may need more professional help. Other than RAM, the most common problems are power supply. There are multiple output voltages, and you may be getting fan-spin, but not CPU or motherboard.

In my case, the faulty power supply took out the hard drive, so really bad things can happen...

P.S. BIOS battery seems low on the list of likely causes, given the symptoms described.

[jimjim1]

google [gigabyte motherboard beep codes]

https://www.gigabyte.com/Support/FAQ/816

1.AWARD BIOS 1short beep ：System normal

2.AMI BIOS 1 short beep ：Memory Error

BIOS manufacturer may be printed on BIOS ROM chip - do they still have these?

Formatting is THEIR terrible formatting. I have fixed the first few lines so you get the idea.

What does BIOS beep sound mean?

1.AWARD BIOS
1 short beep ：System normal
2 short beep ：CMOS Error
1 long beep and 1 short beep：Memory error
1 long beep and 2 short beep：Graphic card error 1 long beep and 3 short beep ：AGP error 1 long beep and 9 short beep ：Memory Error Continuous long beep ：Memory not correctly installed Continuous short beep ：Power supply unit failed

2.AMI BIOS
1 short beep ：Memory Error
2 short beep：Memory parity check error. 3 short beep ：basic memory 64K address check error 4 short beep ：Real Time Clock malfunction . 5 short beep ：CPU error 6 short beep：Keyboard error 7 short beep ：CPU interruption error 8 short beep：Graphic card error 9 short beep ：Memory error 10 short beep ：CMOS error 11 short beep ：CPU cache memory malfunction

There are often RAM timing settings in the BIOS setup.

If the CMOS reset itself due to battery running down perhaps these settings have been lost?

As I recall some have quite complex settings that are hard to figure out. Rather you than me.

[nonsense]

Originally Posted by TURIN

Could it be the BIOS Battery?

21 years ago (eg: may no longer be relevant) I had a work computer with a dead bios battery, with the result that it would lose all its bios settings if unplugged from the power.
Since IT support was sketchy at best, after this first happened, I simply redid all the required bios settings. Soon I realised that the loss of settings was caused by loss of mains power.

My employer naturally did not trust us all, so normally the floppy drives (remember them?) were disabled and the bios settings password protected, but of course my machine, with its dead bios battery which they wouldn't fix, was completely unlocked. In fact it became common knowledge around the plant that it was unlocked, to the extent that the departmental manager (soon to be site manager) would come to me to get access from the network to a floppy drive. Because even he couldn't get useful IT support!

In 1997, a PC with a dead bios battery would boot normally with default bios settings and you could get into the bios to change the settings. I doubt your problem is the bios battery.

[TURIN]

Thanks again for the helpful replies.

I changed the Bios battery this morning and I was able to boot to the Bios.....for about two minutes then it died again.
Subsequent attempts to boot have failed. No beeps, just the fans running,

Considering it was very hot when it failed the other day I'm wondering if I have cooked the PCU, or at least ruined the heatsink interface which is why it booted for a few minutes after being switched off for two days. I suppose the only way to check is to remove the heatsink and have a look.

[TURIN]

Tried again today after checking connections and reinstalling RAM. Got into the BIOS ok checked system status, CPU temp was at 28C then it died again, after about a minute. It hadn't been switched on for a couple of days. Very strange.

[Jhieminga]

Just a wild guess, but is the Power Supply perhaps doing something weird like providing strange voltages or shutting down? Otherwise it sounds to me like theres something major that's wrong with the motherboard itself.

[Saab Dastard]

My guess: PSU faulty or crack in the mobo that manifests itself when the temp rises.

CPU temp of 28C isn't anywhere near hot enough to force thermal protection shutdown. Need to be more like 50C for that.

[TURIN]

Checked the PSU today, all voltages within tolerance but under no load. Pulled all the non essential cards and drives and it still fails after about a minute. The PSU does 'chug' a bit though. I'm starting to think that will be the easiest option first.

Thanks again.

[TURIN]

UPDATE (Whether you want it or not)

Bought myself a new PSU, fitted it but during reassembly I've broken the passive heatsink on the graphics card. To be precise I've snapped the securing pins. They are about 8mm long. I've looked around the internet for replacements but no joy so far. Anybody got any idea where I could find them?

[TURIN]

Huzzah! Used graphics card purchased off ebay for a couple of quid. Fired up the system and all is good. The PSU was all it needed really. Thanks again for your input.

[FullOppositeRudder]

Well done; we love happy endings