ambulance sound coming from computer...

ok, I am building my brother a computer with my old hardware. It keeps sounding like an ambulance when it tries to startup. Gets to like the beginning of windows (ME) and then starts intermittently beeping sounds just like an ambulance. So I went and bought a FLoppy drive (Didn't have one in initially) and now am trying to install windows XP. I boot from CD and it gets to the part where it says hit esc to agree to the terms and whatever then I hit escape and starts beeping. My only thought is that maybe his hard drive is not compat with this motherboard? The HD is off of a Hewlett Packard with a 950mhz processor. Any thoughts are appreciated. Thanks.

 

anyone have any thoughts? It's only halloween, I thought I would have LOTS of replies, LOL

 

Did you put the heatsink on properly, and is the CPU fan plugged in.

 

yes and yes

 

Make sure that BIOS virus protection is off (if its even supported)

If you've got the facilities, check the temperatures of the system in bios.

Can you boot to CD without the HD plugged in? If you can, and it doesnt beep, then it can't be the HD.

Are all of the cards/sticks of ram slotted in completley snugly?

 

Hi,

Did you clean the hs and apply new paste. That alarm is cpu overheat

Rick

 

To be honest, I've NEVER applied any paste to any of the computers I've built. Is it really necessary?

 

Errr, yes... you really do need thermal paste. Go get some AS 5 or Ceramique, then read the Arctic Silver instructions.

How many systems have you made like this

 

A good 20 over the past 6 or so years and never had a problem. THe bottom of heat sinks that come with processors have some kind of paste or something under them don't they?

 

Yes the hs that come with the processors have a thermel pad on them but when you remove any hs you must clean with isopropyl alcohol and apply new paste.

In my experiance, when removing the stock themal pad you also need to lap the hs to remove it completely.

Rick

 

no sh***t

 

I had that problem but it was a usb2.0/firewire card I had installed.
Put the bare min. parts in and start it up. My sys was fine till that
card was installed and it would 'siren' after boot.

 

Oh ok, not quite as disasterous as I thought. Thermal pads are okay... not brilliant though. Better than nothing. You don't need to lap it to remove it, you just need a lint free cloth, some isopropanol alcohol and some paint brush cleaner

Rub the paint brush cleaner onto the pad, and rub it off as it dissolves. Then wash thoroughly with the alcohol. And its sorted.

But anyway, sounds like your CPU should be fine with a pad. As foogoo says, go through the troubleshooting procedure. Disconnect everything but ram, cpu and graphics card (everything, including the hard drive). Keep adding components till you get the sound, and bob's your uncle, you've found your problem

 

Turns out heatsink was slightly loose. Thank you all for the help.