help: long beep and shutdown

[Guest]

in january, i built two identical computers for my brother and I consisting of the following:

Athlon XP 1800+ CPU w/ Taisol HSF (with slightly beefier fan recently installed)
Soyo Dragon+ KT266A motherboard
512 DDR RAM from crucial
Radeon 8500 OEM
2 40 gig IBM 60GXP drives (one of mine needs to be RMA'd due to the motor squealing)
Enermax Whisper 350W powersupply with MB controlled fans
WinME installed on both computers for now (which may be the problem itself)

the only difference between our computers are the cases, and that mine has an SB live while he uses the onboard audio, and he has a CDR drive whereas I just recently broke my old CDROM drive by pulling out the tray.

The problem is that recently, with his computer, he would experience a random system freeze about 10 minutes after starting the computer. I checked the temperatures, and it seemed pretty hot to me at about 45 C. I optimized the airflow and such until it got to a better temperature. But even at low temperatures it would still freeze. Then the real problem began. When he would boot it up, there would be a couple beeps, then a long beep, followed by the system shutting down. After a few attempts it will start up, seemingly randomly.

While working to fix his problem, my system was running fine. But then out of the blue, it started doing the same thing. Start up, couple beeps, long beep, shutdown. I find this very weird because i've never had any problems until the same problem happened to my brothers comp.

The fact that our systems are pretty much identical makes me think it might be the same component failing, like perhaps the power supply or something.


Any ideas?



bryan

 

[Crashman]

I would suspect the power supply. I think those beeps indicate a problem with the video card, but video card problems can also be caused by the power supply.

What's the frequency, Kenneth?

 

[rubikian]

Check your mobo manual to see what does the long beep indicate. Probably there is something loosen (RAM or VGA card) or not functioning (eg. some pins are not telling the mobo that the components actually present).

 

[4Ryan6]

I'm definitely interested in the outcome of this, seeing as how I have the same motherboard that you guys do, from what I've found out from the error beep, it could be related to either the AGP card not being seated because the board has such a deep seating AGP slot that when you use your case securing screws it tends to try and pull up the back of the card, you may even have to use a pair of needle nose pliers and carefully alter the metal securing bracket on the graphics card itself so the card will stay seated. The other possibility is the RAM module not seated all the way or RAM failure. Its very unusual that both of you would be experiencing the same problem at the same time, and its probably the same thing on both computers. I'd take a good look at the seating of your graphics cards, I had noticed that on my own machine, and if its not seated all the way over time vibrations from the fans could loosen it, assisted by the pressure of the case securing screw. Hope you find the problem.