[pyro-manic]

Damn. It. All.

My PC broke.

I don't know what the fark's wrong with it, so I can't fix it. Anybody able to help?

It's completely shagged, as far as I can tell - I had to switch it off at the wall  to get it to shut up. It started beeping from the PC speaker, one beep every two seconds or so. Nothing comes up on the display, and I can't switch it off with the power button on the front.

It did this while I was playing a game (Operation Flashpoint, to be precise). I bought the game last week (after Petrarch told me how to work it! ), and I was playing through it when all of a sudden, it froze, and started beeping at me. Restart didn't work, so I powered-off with the front switch, and left it alone overnight. The next day, it worked fine, so I started playing OpFlash again.
That night, however, it did it again, and now refuses to work.

I'm thinking I might have a buggered component somewhere, which is most annoying (drinking/CD/games money has to be diverted to buying new bits), so I'm wondering if anybody knows what the hell that beeping means, and what I need to do to fix the accursed machine.

Any advice (positive or negative) would be much appreciated.

Thanks!!!

[Stryke 9]

This is like one of those experiments where if a monkey pushes a lever, he gets electrocuted, and they see how many times he'll push the lever before he works it out himself.

Dude, stop playing OFP before something happens that you can't fix. If it's too late, and you can't reboot the computer for love or money (leave it off for a while, try multiple bootings, if you get any sign at all that's a good sign), check that everything's in its proper place, try to get the BIOS up and reformat. Failing that, get a new computer. There's too much important that could have gone too wrong, and if it's the motherboard or something you're better off with a new box anyway.

Incidentially, what happens when you hit the power button? It beep? The monitor get a test pattern? Anything? Might be that you just got a really hideous virus, I can think of one or two that do more than fry hard disks...

[Starks]

That's how my old Craptiva died... A farked up BIOS.

[pyro-manic]

Aww, crap. I thought it might be something nasty.

The power button does nowt. The restart button resets it, but then it goes back to the beeping again.


It's unlikely to be a virus - my comp isn't physically connected to the internet. The only link is a large pile of CDRWs and floppy disks that get formatted and virus-scanned on a regular basis, and two flights of stairs.

Oh....****. Another thing I just noticed. My mobo has a fan on the Northbridge, and it ain't spinning. Could that have cooked it? It looks like a pretty crappy fan anyway, just clipped on loosely, but the chip itself barely has a heatsink - just a metal plate with some little bumps on it.

Another possibility - my PSU was fairly cheap - could it have surged and fried something? I dunno, the keyboard LEDs flash when I switch on, the CPU fan, HDD and DVD drive still work (at least, the HDD hums, and the drive oopens and closes), and the GPU fan still goes as well.

I'm gonna leave it till Wednesday, and then switch it on again, and see if it works. Anyhow, any more help or ideas would be great, and I'll try anything - I can't afford a full new system at the moment, and I need the stuff on my HD!

However, at the moment I'm going to bed. I've got school in six hours, and I'm going to a gig in the evening (Darling, Amen and The Wildhearts!!!!) , so I've got to go or I'll be knackered. I just hope things look better in the morning...

[Stryke 9]

Um... all of the above?

That thing is dead, son. Let it go. Maybe before you toss it you can take out the CPU, hard disks, and memory cards, they might still be usable. Save you some money for the next one.

[CP5670]

I had a somewhat similar problem but not quite as severe; the computer refused to boot up, giving just a black screen along with a couple of strange beeps on startup (completely different tones from the usual ones), but I could shut it down and the fans were working fine. It turned out that the processor was fried so that had to be replaced, but everything else was okay.

[karajorma]

Those beeps your motherboard is making is your computers attempt to try to tell you what's wrong with it. Try searching for the beep codes for your particular motherboard before you junk it.

Most likely you will have to junk it but it seems silly to do that if all that's happened is your memory coming loose in the socket.

[Petrarch of the VBB]

Oh dear, in a roundabout way this is my fault...

[pyro-manic]

Heh, don't worry 'bout it, Petrarch. **** happens. It might be that OFP just finished the the thing off after two years of abuse from me.  Constant playing of resource-hungry games can't be good for a computer, and it probably just went "screw this" and died after seeing the huge landscapes in OFP. I attach no blame to you whatsoever.

(Just buy me a new PC and we'll call it quits, eh?)  (joke).

Thanks for the help, all! I'm trying to find the beep codes for the motherboard, and I'll post what I find.

[Odyssey]

The most common BIOS is an AMI BIOS... Unfortunately, singular beeps every 2 seconds isn't something they do. Neither is it something that Award or Phoenix BIOS's have a habit of committing.
If it is an AMIBIOS, I'd guess that the most logical explanation for what you've got is a single beep, presumably just being repeated every now and then. What that means is a DRAM refresh failure, i.e. a problem with the system bus. Try reseating the memory (give it a good hard shove when you put it in, not just pressing it in and clipping the clips - you gotta press it hard enough for the clips to fix themselves on), and making sure nothing might be shorting the motherboard anywhere. If that fails, there might be something horribly wrong with your memory chips - if possible try some that you know work, maybe borrow some from another computer.

This all seems unlikely given the circumstances, though. If a fan isn't going somewhere, and something died in the middle of a resource-hungry task (OF, most games these days...), then you probably fried something. Fix for that is to fork out for a new motherboard, with a shiney new Northbridge and working fan.

[Petrarch of the VBB]

Come to think of it, my old PC died when I was playing OFP.

I sent it back to the Vendor to get it fixed, but they went out of business and we never got it back!:mad:

Anyway, I was not surprised, either, as it was of dire spec.

[MAD Maniac]

hey,

Ur problem sounds oddly familier to one i had awhile ago. I was playing a high spec game (Haegemonia) when mine bombed out to a blue screen and refused to do sod all.

(lot of resting later)

found out me ram had died. There a prog u can use to test urs (if u can get it to boot from a floppy) at this address
www.memtest86.com

If u get of errors in test 5 ur ram is sodded.

Hope u find this helpful

MM

[Zaxzon]

If your fan stopped spinning, then you cooked your CPU. Buy a new one with a good fan. Also get a new power supply, atleast a 300 watt one, if you think that is becoming suspect.  The beeping sounds like a CPU or memory failure. What kind of mobo do you have in there?

[Unknown Target]

Try booting to safe mode, removing the device, booting into windows, and auto-installing the drivers.

[IceFire]

Originally posted by Zaxzon
If your fan stopped spinning, then you cooked your CPU. Buy a new one with a good fan. Also get a new power supply, atleast a 300 watt one, if you think that is becoming suspect.  The beeping sounds like a CPU or memory failure. What kind of mobo do you have in there?

His fan stopped spinning on the northbridge he said.  Its a component on the board, not specifically the processor.

Basically, if it stopped spinning and OFP was running, the load probably cooked that part of the mobo.  Its done.  If the singular beep does mean on your system that there is a problem with the system bus then a dead northbridge is as good an indication as any.

You probably don't have to buy a new system, but you do have to be proficient at replacing the motherboard and/or taking it somewhere to be serviced.

[Starks]

I'm still trying to figure out how to do a Flash Upgrade of my crappy A07 Intel BIOS... The CA810E is the oldest mobo that Intel still supports. It has a FlashBIOS upgrade but I don't know how to upgrade it.

[Zaxzon]

Blah... that is what i get for skimming through the posts.

LLivingLarge go Here and read that. If you get memory errors then check this out over here

[Turnsky]

well on the bright side, your dead pc might have some useful parts..

[pyro-manic]

Turnsky:


The mobo is a Gigabyte GA-7DX (AMD 761, DDR, onboard sound). I'm pretty sure it is an AMI-BIOS (from what I remember from the boot-up screen), so yeah, the Northbridge is probably toast.  I've emailed Gigabyte asking for a list of the beep codes, but they haven't replied yet. I've got a bad feeling, to be honest - any recommendations for a new motherboard? Should take Athlon CPU, DDR RAM, and be able to fit a new heatsink to the Northbridge (I'm gonna get a load of stuff from www.quietpc.com - no more fried stuff for me!).

[Stryke 9]

I don't get it. What, you don't do that?