HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! PC died

I am on a borrowed PC .. last night I was going to install a 1394 firewire card on my pc to work with my camcorder and I thought at the same time I would install some more ram a friend gave me................ well the pc makes noise and acts like it is starting up it gives me 1 long beep and nothing else........
it has windows XP the upgrade on it.......................... I do not know much else and I am a beginner ,I uninstalled the extra Ram again and the 1394 card but the same beep thing is going on,,, what happened can it be saved?

 

Also re-seat the RAM that's still in there.

 

ok did all that stuff , (checked ,pulled out , reinstalled,video, Ram , Modem , cables , etc) also I think we tried to clear the BIOS (if we did it right) We are not very computer techy but we tried . WE still have the same problem . a long beep and a blank screen, He bought me another pc but we do have a bit of money in this one I would hate to just let it be a dust collecter or a item for the trash, any more suggestions?

 

the easyest way of killing bios settings is just to remove the silver battary on the motherboard unplug your system from the wall and leave it for about 30 mins. Also i would say just use you old ram not the new stuff hope that helps

 

What BIOS are you using? If we knew that we could tell what the beeps mean. I'm thinking something got bumped & is not seated well, most likely RAM.

 

Have you tried removing the RAM you just installed?

Have you tried removing the new 1394 card and seeing if it boots then?

 

we tried reseating the ram and we removed the other stuff we added, Now we are going to remove battery and see if that helps ,,, thank you for the tips again . I will keep you posted

 

oh yes how can I tell what BIOS it is ?

 

Look for the chip on the motherboard....it will say ***** BIOS and a date on it.
But it does still sound like something is not seated right.

 

I think it is AMD .. unhooked the battery for 30 min same thing ....the book says AMD Athlon/Duron Processer is that what you mean?

 

The version of the BIOS is one of the first things you see when you boot the system, but since your's is not booting, this doesn't much matter.

Try taking everything out except bare bones. Minimal RAM, just video, mouse, keyboard and power.

 

FYI, there is another thread recently posted with another geek getting a long beep too, it is suspected that it may be the video card. So if you have another, give that a shot.