Whats gone wrong?

[P3-450]

OK, so im playing on a game on my main pc and all of a sudden my pc just switches of. No errors, no STOP errors, nothing.

So the first thing i did was to turn it back on.

When i turned it on i get nothing displayed on my monitor. but after a few secs i get 3 long beeps. and then my pc switches of.

This was around midnight last night, so i said to myself hey i wanna go to bed, and ill sort it out in the morning.

So today i goes to turn it on and this time i get nothing. i press the power button on and when i let go the fans start i see the cs-rom and keyboard light come on but in a split second the pc is off again.

Now i thought last night it could be a video problem, but now i think it may be a PSU problem.

Now before i jump to conclusions and start fiddling about with power supplies, i wanna know what you guys think.

What did those 3 long beeps stand for.

Any ideas?

oh and i have check all connection, cleaned inside and all that.


Cheers

[104456]

Hi P3-450
Three beeps is usually a memory problem on AMI boards hope its not the board itself

Your computer has memory problems. First, check video. If video is working, you'll see an error message. If not, you have a parity error in your first 64K of memory. Check your SIMMs. Reseat them and reboot. If this doesn't do it, the memory chips may be bad. You can try switching the first and second bank memory chips. First banks are the memory banks in which your CPU finds its first 64K of base memory. You'll need to consult your manual to see which bank is first. If all of your memory tests good, you probably need to buy another motherboard.

http://www.pcmech.com/show/troubleshoot/14/

[P3-450]

Thanks mate

i do have AMI and if it is the memory then i would be pi*sed off, being that its from crucial

Anyway i will take memory out and clean and reseat it.

Ill report back

[DuaneB]

The AMI BIOS beep code list doesn't have 3 long beeps. 3 short beeps is for memory failure.

http://www.bioscentral.com/beepcodes/amibeep.htm

[P3-450]

ok reseated the ram and still same thing.

Thanks Duane, i might have misheard the beeps, but there where definetly3 beeps.

so the other thing it might be is 1 long and 2 short beeps, indicating a video system failure.

I will have a look at the video card.

[104456]

Just a side note on that thought P3 I have had a system fail to boot before now with a faulty video card.
Its hard to say cross fingers because what ever it is means a replacement somewhere.

[P3-450]

OK, im really getting worried now ive taken the memory and the vid card. still the same thing

i really do hope its not a the mobo at fault. i though about swaping my psu, with one of my other machines.

but the other is a 230w psu, so i dont know if that would be enough for this system.

How would i go about testing a the psu just to see if it wrecked? (without being electricuted) i do have a multimeter somewhere, just a matter of finding it.

[104456]

I think supersparks has posted links before on testing power supplies :

Ooh ere you go.......
http://www.ochardware.com/articles/p.../psuvolt2.html

[DuaneB]

Here's another one.

"How to Test PSU Voltages"
http://www.valleyforums.com/showthread.php?t=275


opps! I guess it's the same one (different site).

[P3-450]

Cheers, i was actually looking for that but couldnt find it.

Ill give it a try and see what happens.

[SuperSparks]

I turn off the computer for a couple of hours so that I could watch Top Gear (I want an Aston Martin DB9, please) and that SAS thing afterwards and I miss all the excitement

P3, have a good look at the mobo for any signs of leaking capactiors - any brown goo or crud anywhere around them. As you probably know there has been a bit of a problem with leaking mobo capacitors, and it can cause this kind of sudden problem.

There are some good pictures of what to look for here:

http://www.careyholzman.com/

[Train]

Under the pictures links in the left pane, them are some nasty lookers.

[P3-450]

Nick, you never know, you look outside you window on christmas day and you see a glowing DB9 just waiting for ya.

or you just wake up and have your breakfast


Thanks for the link, ill have a good look tomorrow when i finish work.

Cheers

[P3-450]

So, ive removed all my card and memory, i had a good look around with a torch for any dodgy molten capacitors and things.

They all look as good as when i bought it. While i had everything was out hooked some power in to it to see if it will start without cards but nothing ticked.

So it has to be a mobo or a psu fault right?

I wanna see if the mobo has enough power to it, so do i leave the psu power connector in the mobo with nothing else connected. Then shall i check the power in the molex connector.

I think i need some instructions for a dumb*ss here,maybe i should have payed more attention in science class.

Any other ideas?

[SuperSparks]

To test the 5v & 12v rails then you can leave the connector plugged in and test them at a Molex connector. Put the black probe of the multimeter in one of the black contacts and the red probe in the yellow contact for 5volt and the red contact for 12volt. If you then want to test the 3.3 rail then you need to unlug everything and short the 2 pins as described in that article. If you do that don't leave it powered up for long, it's not good to run switch-mode power supplies without a load.

If you're not too comfortable with doing that then substitute your other PSU - 230 Watts will be more than enough to power up the mobo, CPU & graphics card to a DOS prompt. Unplug all the drives except the floppy, and take out all your PCI cards if any.