My computer doesn't start

April 24, 2004 5:07 PM

My computer doesn't start. That's bad. I recently picked up a barebones system, and got it all up and running, but now I just get a couple of beeps. [more inside]

It's an Athlon 2600 with a Biostar M7NCG400 mobo. I set it up on an old monitor, no problem; but when I plugged it into my regular monitor, it crashed about halfway through starting up (at the point where W2K flips over to hi-res mode). I could occasionally get it to come up in Safe Mode, and deleted the video drivers. Then I took a couple days off from the machine, and came back to it today. Today, I get nothing but one low beep, and then one high beep that doesn't stop. I thought it was somehow overheating, and put a new coat of thermal grease on it (then i booted sans heat sink, and got the overheat "siren", so that's not it). I've unplugged the hard drive and everything on the IDE ribbons. I've tried booting with no memory in it, and I *do* get one ugly low beep out of that - but I can't decide whether it's just faulting out before it can get to the low-high beep or what.

I'm at my wit's end--all the sources I can Google have info on sequences of beeps, like 4-3-2-1, not one high, one low.

posted by notsnot to computers & internet (5 comments total)

Do you have a different video card you can test with? Your card might be dead.
posted by Jairus at 5:26 PM on April 24, 2004

The mobo has onboard video, fortunately or not.
posted by notsnot at 5:34 PM on April 24, 2004

The beeps will mean something. See here for more information. It's probably an award BIOS (double check this), and it's either a memory error or a problem with your video card.
posted by seanyboy at 5:51 PM on April 24, 2004

notsnot: But do you have a video card you can test with? Even if it has onboard video, you can stick a new card in it, at least with most boards I've worked with.
posted by Jairus at 6:21 PM on April 24, 2004

I *think* I've got an old, old, old Number Nine vid card. I'll try that. I'm thinking it's the mobo, one way or another.
posted by notsnot at 9:45 PM on April 24, 2004