Uh oh. Need help.

[Johanthegnarler]

Ok, i have two computers on a desk in our office at home.
Well, my dad bought a couple years back a hewlet packard.
Just a few minutes ago the thing decided to be weird... and i went to restart the beast.. well it wasn't having that.
The screen went black the fans stayed going.. the little light in front went orange.
When you go to boot it up it gives 8 beeps.. since i don't know what kind of MOBO it has in it.. or anything about it.. i dont' know what the 8 beeps could mean.
The fans go, the mobo power led is green, the power supply led in back is green.. nothing smells burnt.
So..
I guess here i go.
Memory,Video Card or CPU.
What really sucks is i have nothing to swap with the parts to fix it.. so it's basically going to be a good luck thing.
I'm quite sure it's the memory, but i'm too lazy to try anything now it's late.
p4 2.8 533fsb
intel mobo
1gb rdram pc 800
radeon9800 pro
120gb seagate s-ata<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Johanthegnarler on 12/22/03 01:07 AM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[Johanthegnarler]

ok.. nevermind.
I just cleaned my RAM.. and it worked. Interesting what a house full of dust will do.

p4 2.8 533fsb
intel mobo
1gb rdram pc 800
radeon9800 pro
120gb seagate s-ata

 

[ZZSpaceman]

Can you remove half of your Memory? I don't have an RDRAM system, but if you can you might try to isolate a bad module. May be easy enough to try although this would not be my first guess at the problem.

Given you don't have spare parts around let it cool down a while and restart. If you can get a BIOS screen check your voltages.

My first guess is your power supply, second is your video card based on your black screen comment. When the memory acts up usually you get something on the screen.

The 9800Pro takes lots of power and will wear down an underpowered or low quality PS.


ZZSpaceman

 

[ytoledano]

RDRAM requires memory to be installed in pairs and won't boot with only one stick, but on any other system that's the first thing to do.
Also, you can only get to your BIOS after your computer has POSTed (usualy single beep) if the systems has detected a problem with one of the components - there is s a system check on every boot, the beep means everything's OK, anything else means something's wrong (some systems can skip this test) it would announce an error and do nothing.

I know what everyone's been wondering - 2^33634943-1 IS NOT PRIME. Now, wasn't that worth running <A HREF="http://www.mersenne.com" target="_new">Prime95</A> for a month to know?

 

[Johanthegnarler]

Thanks for replying, but the problem computer is an older Hewlett Packard that sits next to mine.
My computer is fine. The only reason why the beeps threw me off is becuase i don't know anything about my dads computer.
I know it's a pentium 4, but i don't know what kind of memory and what kind of motherboard it has in it.
I took the biatch apart and just cleaned the metal contacts, and it worked. I knew from other peoples computers that the beeping is usually memory, but for some reason i thought the fans wouldn't spin if the memory was bad.

I was wrong. Just dirty metal contacts. One spec of dust messed it all up.

p4 2.8 533fsb
intel mobo
1gb rdram pc 800
radeon9800 pro
120gb seagate s-ata

 

[Abomonog]

That throws out my theory on the problem (that the problem with the computer was that it was a hewlett packard).

 

[Zoron]

If ya hear beeps, chances are it won't be the CPU. POST requires the CPU in order for it to complete, doesn't it?

<font color=red> If you design software that is fool-proof, only a fool will want to use it. </font color=red>

 

[Johanthegnarler]

Yes I think your correct. But.. i think almost always beeps are memory errors. I think it can be memory errors on video cards too.. i had a dead Nvidia card back in the day. just a geforce 3 ti and the memory on the card itself was dead.
At least that's what nvidia told me.. but it was throwing beeps at me left and right.

p4 2.8 533fsb
intel mobo
1gb rdram pc 800
radeon9800 pro
120gb seagate s-ata

 

[Ris3n_Da3mon]

From my experience the mobo will give some sort of beep/beeps to tell you that the cpu is bad.

01001001 00100000 01001100 01001111 01010110 01000101 00100000 01110011 01110000 01100101 01100001 01110010 01101101 01101001 01101110 01110100 00100001