PC has stopped booting

Hi all,

I've just spent the afternoon trying to install a couple of SATA drives with the intention of removing the old ATA drives and putting a fresh XP build on.....but things have got interesting.

Established earlier that i needed to get the Samsung SP1312C SATA drivers, which i've been looking for (and still looking for)...however thats not the problem now.

The PC would only boot if i cleared the BIOS (jumper switch), and then it would only boot once. If i re-start after re-setting the BIOS to boot from CD the PC wouldn't boot (you could hear the thing mem check but no display)....reset the BIOS again and it would boot (viscous circle).

Situation i have now is that on startup i now get 3 short high pitched beeps followed by 2 low beeps. I've removed everything bar the graphics card from the PCI slots and all external peripherals so i'm running a CDRW drive, 1 60GB hard drive and RAM. I've re-seated the RAM and tried to boot with each indicidual stick in, tried a different Graphics card...no joy. Beginning to think that the CPU has had it but the funny thing is after the beeps on startup you can still hear the thing POST and detect the Keyboard.

The last thing i have tried is removing the CMOS battery again, symptoms remain.

Any idea's?

Thanks

Abit KV7 motherboard
60GB Samsung ATA HDD
1.00GB RAM
Samsung CDRW drive (Internal)
Nvidia 6600GT OC

 

I'v got corrupt bios or bad system memory,so if your board has a backup bios check your manual as to how to switch to it or try booting with just one stick of memory,then try all the other on their own in slot 1

 

Ok thanks Rikky, hadn't considered that. I think i've pretty much obliterated whatever BIOS was there so i'm going to go with the memory in slot1 option... bizarre problem though, if it hadn't been for Nvidia support i would probably have never started this as the machine was fine except for the graphics card switching to vga mode on first boot even in Windows...they reckoned it was voltage so i upped the PSU to 500W...I'll get it working, i've had probs along a similar line before when i've done a fresh wipe... if MS had developed a way to install 3rd party raid drivers by CD instead of floppy i'd have been ok!!

thanks for your help though chief, i'll let you know how it goes!!

cheers

 

Hey Shrapnel -

I've gone through some similar stuff...

first try here to identify your beep errors -

http://www.pchell.com/hardware/index.shtml

Then maybe here-

http://users.pandora.be/educypedia/computer/motherboardbios.htm

to check for various BIOS recovery tools. Also, I would make myself an "UltimateBoot" CD that will boot just from floppy at the DOS level. It may be that you can't get to windows, but CAN get to a command interface.

UltimateBoot can be found here -http://ubcd.sourceforge.net/

and it works for a wide variety of problems... just make sure that if you ever do get to BIOS that you set BIOS to boot from CD relatively early ( before master HD ). I realize you may not be able to do that now, but try and burn UBCD from someone else's machine..........


Good Luck

Xferman

 

Errr boots from CD easiest....

 

Thanks Xferman,

I've had another look at it today and still the same prob when i try the individual sticks in Dimm1...The strange thing is you can hear it POST and spin the CDrom up...just no video display. Beginning to think the BIOS is wrecked.

I've had a look at the beep codes and they seem to indicate a memory problem (3 short beeps)..its just that the 3 short beeps are followed by 2 deeper beeps....i'm going to take your advice on the Boot CD and have a look for some recovery tools!!.

Thanks again

 

The bios doesn't require memory because the bios is a memory chip in its own right. The CD will "spark up and spin" with just the power cables plugged in.

If you've tried all the dimm slots, and tried all the memory sticks one at a time in all the dimm alots, then perhaps it isn't them. Having one crap out is an option, having them all crap out isn't. If you can boot from a CD or floppy into dos, then the computer has got past the BIOS stage and now using the memory, and the memory and BIOS is ok. If The BIOS stops you getting beyond the BIOS, it will do that whatever way you boot.

If the new hard drive is the only hard drive in the system and not yet formatted, then the BIOS will goof off unless the first drive the BIOS visits is the CD drive with the windows disk in, or a bootable disk/CD. Most BIOS cannot see an unformated drive, and tries to find another bootup option, like the windows disk, or a bootable floppy. Change the order the BIOS searches out the drives, (cd first), pop Windows in the CD drive, and if windows setup don't take over, then you have eliminated everything as the problem, and identified it as the BIOS.

 

Thanks for the reply,

Things have developed slightly in that i have reverted back to the original power supply but it still doesn't like it, the difficulty being with no video signal its difficult to see what you are doing. I've got access to a similar spech machine so will try individual components to trouble shoot.

I've tried the suggestion of the Windows setup disk but although the cdrom spins up it doesn't sound as if its cutting into setup (no activity except spinning up).

The beeps are still there..now 1 long followed by 2 shorter beeps. Not the best of starts to an upgrade but these things happen.

 

All sorted.

Having exhausted any possibility that it was any of the chips, memory psu, mobo etc it tuned out to be a defective floppy drive, for some reason it was horting the supply...

Swapped out drive....all good...

Thanks for the help