PC not booting, again

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Roquefort

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Please I;m really desperate here.

A while back a pc that I sold to my mom just died one day, no POST test nothing, then all of a sudden it started to POST (8 beeps). We sent it to some place and they said its a BIOS virus (but they were pretty useless, and I'm sure it wasnt cos I've never touched the stuff). Anyway one day it just started working again, after about a month.

So today I'm working on it, cleaning the heatsinks and that, and when i try to boot up it did exactly the same thing (nothing; POST 8 beeps; still waiting for it to work)

Has anyone experienced this or got any ideas, (I know this sounds lame and cliche, but my moms gonna kill me)

Specs:
Intel P4 3.0Ghz
2* 512mb RAM
Geforce 6600 - the first time i had this problem i was running a radeon 9600 Pro
MSI board (865pe neo2-p)
 
Does your motherboard's manual give you a description of what the different beeps at POST indicate? It might be a good place to start.
 
I dont have the manual any more, and Im not sure what the BIos is, apart from its the original. I looked around a bit and the only thing I could find with 8 beeps was something to do with the graphics bus. But I was no where near there.
 
a number of beeps suggest graphics failure.
either the card is loose, or faulty.

if it is faulty, i would bet it is blown capacitors...they will be bulging on the top instead of flat.
 
Roquefort said:
I dont have the manual any more, and Im not sure what the BIos is, apart from its the original. I looked around a bit and the only thing I could find with 8 beeps was something to do with the graphics bus. But I was no where near there.
Click to expand...

werner said:
a number of beeps suggest graphics failure.
either the card is loose, or faulty.

if it is faulty, i would bet it is blown capacitors...they will be bulging on the top instead of flat.
Click to expand...

I agree, the card is probably loose. It's unlikely that it's faulty (unless your Radeon 9600 was malfunctioning at the time, which would make it plausible). Try reseating your graphics card.
 
capacitors look all good, no buldges or anything

also before I put this card in I had a radeon 9600 pro in, and I had this same problem. My brothers using that 9600 pro right now and its working fine.
 
tried reseating the card but still, same 8 beeps pause 8 beeps

I also removed all the other hardware (ram, hdds, cd, sound card), and the cmos battery for some reason

Still only 8 beeps
 
Ask your brother whether you may borrow his 9600 and test whether it happens when you swap graphics cards.
 
Thank you so much for helping me guys. I never got round to actually checking the graphics card with my brothers, because I was busy trying to fix the pc.

Well I dont know exactly whats wrong with it, all I did was take everything out (mobo and all) and rebuilt it. I'm still not to sure the graphics card was loose, I did push it in very hard and the gold parts were sunk.

Um is there anything you guys can suggest that could prevent this from happening again?
 
Roquefort said:
Thank you so much for helping me guys. I never got round to actually checking the graphics card with my brothers, because I was busy trying to fix the pc.

Well I dont know exactly whats wrong with it, all I did was take everything out (mobo and all) and rebuilt it. I'm still not to sure the graphics card was loose, I did push it in very hard and the gold parts were sunk.

Um is there anything you guys can suggest that could prevent this from happening again?
Click to expand...

Screw it down in future? :p
 
ye, still not sure why though, you have any ideas?

I'm pretty convinced the mobo's on its way out, it is like seven years old, and has lots of heavy gaming with bad cooling.
 
sigh,

After getting the pc to work, installing windows etc, it crashed during installing my sound card drivers, followed by a "ntldr press control alt delete" message. So I simply thought the hdd was bad (about 15 years old).

I then left the one 40gb in and added a 80gb. When I switched the computer back on, nothing happened again, even after waiting for about three minutes
 
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