My girlfriend installed a new graphics card and some RAM in her PC yesterday and shes manage to bugger something up good and proper. Its 50/50 whether it posts at all, sometimes the fans are spinning, things come on but no-ones home with no beeps. Very occasionally you get one long beep, but this is cured by resetting the CMOS via the motherboard jumper. Every time I try altering the BIOS and saving it it ends up not POSTing or beeping at me until I reset the CMOS again. If I leave it as is with nothing changed in the BIOS itll boot into Windows without any problems, however the CPU speed is obviously running at half what it should, FSB is too slow etc because its running off the default settings.

This happens with the old and new graphics card, and Ive tried all the usual things like removing everything, swapping RAM in and out (tried four sticks now), unplugging everything non essential from the PSU, re-flashing the BIOS with the latest firmware; nothing seems to be working.

Im tearing my hair out on this one as Ive ran out of ideas and Ive no inkling where to go looking next for the cause of the problem. Has anyone experienced or seen anything like this before? Is it symptomatic of anything in particular?

Edit : Forgot to mention, the times that it does boot successfully it throws up CMOS checksum errors and CPU alteration errors (those F1 to continue, del to enter setup ones) that I can just bypass pressing F1 and it boots fine. I checked the battery with a multimeter and its kicking out 3.2v so it isnt on the way out; although Im not sure that a dodgy battery would cause these problems anyway.

what wattage is the PSU?

That is a good one.
I find that when that happens I just rip the whole pc apart and put it back together.

PSU is an Antec Truepower 480. Ive tried it with only one stick of RAM and anything that isnt required plugged in and it didnt make any difference.

Ive stripped everything down, taken the whole thing apart and put it all back together again but that didnt make any difference either.

camt really think of anything yet... will have a think and post back.... its probably something random :-(


.... a few months back it took me a week to fix my PC.... it wont boot if I enable the USB keybord in the bios :s
(caused all kinds of freaky problems... and I know what youre all thinking..... it was something else and I just think it was the keybord thing.... but if I re-enable it everything goes tits up again after 3 months perfect running!)

The one long beep thing has me worried.... Im wandering if the CPU has been damaged in some way. The fan is working and temps are fine but it may have taken a knock while the better half was fitting the graphics card. Ive done a bit of googling and the one long beep Im getting occasionally indicates a bad or missing CPU; however I was always under the impression that if the CPU went kaput it went completely kaput; it was either on or off and couldnt "half" work.

Did she have power on while changing stuff ?

does it start better when its warm instead of cold ?

...i.e. after you;ve tried a few times etc...?

Scrappit. £50 would fix it off ebay, no hoff.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjxY9rZwNGU

Power was off while she was changing stuff Bear. Knighty; the starts seem to be completely random, cold or warm start doesnt make a difference. And sdp; Ive no idea what youre on about, sorry mate.  :mrgreen:

Where she wearing clothes that gave a lot of static sparks ?
Have you checked the mem slots, if anything fell in like a tiny piece of metall or something ? take a good look in the
slots graphic and RAM.

Quote from: bearWhere she wearing clothes that gave a lot of static sparks ?
Have you checked the mem slots, if anything fell in like a tiny piece of metall or something ? take a good look in the
slots graphic and RAM.

They are all clear, nothing floating around that shouldnt be in there and as I said its all been stripped and cleaned and checked for things like that.

The PC is physically running fine now, its booted into windows and ran through all the DirectDraw and Direct3D tests fine.

However its only running on the BIOS defaults. And every time it boots you either get a CMOS checksum error OR a CPU is unworkable or has changed error, both allow you to bypass by hitting F1.

So obviously only running at 1,100Mhz its a pain in the arse and obviously something is knackered. For the time being Im discounting the graphics card since on quick tests that works, and weve swapped between four different sticks of RAM so Im discounting memory as well.

So its a choice of CPU, motherboard, PSU or CMOS battery.

Now, would a failing CMOS battery kick up this kind of crap? In my experience (many many years ago) you just had to re-enter settings manually but it would work fine. However on this the second you try and alter any CMOS settings itll crash or hang on reboot or start kicking out one long repeated beep).

Now, PSU. Again Im not sure if a PSU would do this unless its been damaged in some way. But then why would the system work at all and boot into Windows? Plus weve tried disconnecting everything non-essential, so that may be a non starter?

Now the mobo may be borked, the graphics card almost takes up the entire case so the better half could feasibly have fried something without realising.

Ditto for the CPU. Its an XP1700+ that has been running stable at 2Ghz for the past three years or so so maybe its just given up the ghost. Although as I said previously I always thought they just went poof and were either on or off. I may be completely wrong on that.

So Im interested in opinions on this. I may just pick up a new mobo and CPU second hand since XPs and Socket A mobos are so cheap these days. And then obviously if that doesnt fix it its time to start looking at the PSU. But Id be interested if anyone had any thoughts to the contrary or anything I can try before forking out for some second hand gear.

Stick a new battery in first, about 50p

Quote from: filbertStick a new battery in first, about 50p

Probably sensible before I fork out on anything else, Im in Bradford tomorrow so Ill swing by Maplins and pick one up.