"All of a sudden" issue with my system

[juicec]

Hello,

I've had this system of mine for ~8 years or so and its been great to me. I'm in college and while I realize I should upgrade, my netbook and until now this desktop has served me well in my needs.

The system has been running well without issue for its entire life, I suppose I'm due at this point. I have a dual monitor set up and had the cables in the back pulled -- I'm thinking something was rattled loose and when I powered back on I kept getting 4 beeps (high-low-high-low) and a keyboard not detected error (I have a wireless keyboard). In the start up screen I am asked to F4 to boot, after continuing I seem to have 3-4 minutes before shutting down without notice -- my first thought was over heating.

I than powered on with just the bios open, I have an average temp of ~63C and while I realize this isn't ideal it also is not in the over heating range.

I have since taken it completely apart and with the help of this form and old posts about my mother board D865Perl, I built just the power supply + mobo on a sheet of cardboard to rule out grounding issues. I receive 3 beeps which I am told tells me that my processor/mobo are not fried.

The second I put in a stick of memory I am right back to the 4 beeps and unsure exactly what that's telling me -- a timing issue according to the manual but what does that mean to me?

Thanks so much for the help guys, I'm here to respond as quick as possible -- I need this bad boy running for my studies

 

[juicec]

As a quick follow up, I also removed the battery thinking that a CMOS issue might be about. It seemed to boot up OK once but power down in the typical 3-4 minute period and now I'm back to the 4 beep ordeal after plugging in anything after just the mobo and power supply.

And to further confirm my thoughts against it being an over heating issue ... If I drop in 2 identical memory sticks I get 4 beeps and immediate or shortly thereafter shut down. If I take them out and touch nothing, I get 3 beeps but the system stays powered on all day without problem and the heatsink is very cool to the touch... I just don't see it being a heat issue.

Edit: Perhaps an issue with the memory slots? I put identical DIMMs into a1b1 and I get 0 beeps. This is with my graphics card also inserted. However I try again with 4 sticks not in optimal pairings and although I get a message about the DIMMs not being optimal, I get no beeps and no power down. The second I plug in my harddrive, 4 beeps return and shut down soon follows.

 

[juicec]

Now it just beeps 4 times (high-low-high-low) and shuts off soon after. I am back to thinking its a heating issue as my constant start ups to test may have heated it up enough to retain to the next try. I'm going to give it a few minutes, change/touch nothing and see if it goes from beeping to not beeping.

 

[smorizio]

with the power off reseat the video card and see if the beep code changes. if it does not pull the video card and see if the system stays up. one other issue is check under the mb to see if there a screw that could have fallen out and shorting the mb.