6 month old homebuilt wont boot

[dblake]

I built a computer 6 months ago with the following parts:

MOBO=GIGABYTE GA-EP45-DS3R
CPU=INTEL Q9550
RAM=MUSHKIN 996580 DII800 (XP2-6400) 8Gb
POWER SUPPLY=Corsair 620HX
HARD DRIVES=2 ea Western Digital 750Gb SATA
HARD DRIVE= 1 ea Western Digital 640Gb SATA
DVD BURNER=2 ea LG GH20NS15 20X SATA
VIDEO CARD=VGA GIGABYTE GV-RX385512H HD3850

It had been running fine but this morning when I booted it went through the preliminaries, got to the point where it loads the Acronis op system loader & then emitted one long continuous beep.

So far I've reseated the video card (no help) reset the bios to failsafe defaults (no help) & tried booting from a floppy (boots up ok to DOS).

I thought I noticed a slight slowdown yesterday when I was compiling video but dont know if it was significant, the system monitor showed all 4 cpu's with load when I think normally it only shows one under load. The total cpu load showed only about 28% however. Memory usage was negligible as I recall.

Any ideas?

 

[shortstuff_mt]

What does your motherboard owners manual say about 1 long beep? It usually means a memory problem. Here's a checklist to go through.

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/261145-31-build-post-checklist

I'd focus on the RAM for now. I bet you had a stick of RAM die.

 

[dblake]

The manual mentions continuous long beeps (plural) being video card not seated but I just tried a e-GeForce 6200 PCI card & get the same result.

The manual doesn't have my exact situation (typical). It sez 1 long followed by 1 short=memory or mobo error; 1 long-2 short=monitor or graphics card; etc.

I have 1 continuous non-stop beep til I reset or power down but changing video card don't help so I guess I'll have to tackle the ram. Was hoping to avoid it, its more of pain to get to. Oh well...

 

[Proximon]

Sounds like a heat alarm to me, not an error beep.

That and the slowdown you encountered make me suspect the fan failed on your CPU or some such.

 

[kubes]

I think both short and prox are right with their ideas. Reading the link that shortstuff posted can really help eliminiate a bunch of problems. So make sure to read through all of the bullets.

I do however thing that that is a heat alarm. I've seen some motherboards coming with them now (I think its a good idea). Check to see if all your fans are still spinning. Does anything smell like its burning? Are there any visual clues inside your case? Is anything seem extremely hot?

 

[dblake]

When I looked at the bios computer health thing I'm pretty sure all fans were reported running but I'll check visually.

I think it said cpu temps were 30-32 c.

 

[dblake]

would a heat alarm stop it from loading the op system? I'm starting to get a little puzzled cause all the discs I put in seem to boot ok (dos floppy, acronis boot cd, memtest 86 cd-which passed, ultimate boot cd).

the beep starts just when it sez its going to load acronis, after listing all the pci stuff & doing a dmi check or something.

 

[Proximon]

The other stuff might not tax the system the way the OS does, but yes if you are able to run all that it's not as likely.

You could just have some serious infection I guess, but the beep seems to indicate otherwise.

Could it actually be your video card that is beeping?

 

[dblake]

i did change video cards & still got the beep.

visual check shows all fans running.

i ran some utilites on the ubcd4win, dont know how trustworhy they are but they show 4 fans running 973-2437 rpm, cpu cores all at 42 C.

the mushkin forum reccs pulling 2 sticks of ram, guess i'll try that but memtest sees it all & says its ok (1 hour test).

 

[dblake]

All right, I will accept the idiot of the week award.

It finally dawned on me the beep was coming just b4 loading the boot loader, AFTER the post.

I booted with the Acronis floppy & re-enabled the boot loader-rebooted & all was fine. arrrggghhh!

At least I found out my spare video card works in the new machine & got it dusted out.

 

[kubes]

Well glad you were able to fix it