Yrag and Jafo beat me to it

You had some lightning over there while your pc was still by that friend?
Not sure if lightning can cause the same effect as I had but still .
I was trying to get forecasts in morse code. I connected some stuff up to my sound card and it blew it up. My soundcard was onboar on my MB and appearantly it also killed the processor with that.

BoXXi sorry to hear this happened.

1. what Make/Model motherboard?

2. do the CPU and PSU fans kick on as they should when you turn the power on, even older systems had safety features which tripped the PSU off at certain tempatures?

3. unplug the drive and see if it makes it past posting and actually trys to boot the OS. If so, it is a drive/interface issue of some sort.

4. have you made sure that none of the Pins on the Monitors (captive) VGA cable got bent and folded over by accident when you hooked the monitor back up? If so, you can bend it(them) back, but do it slowly by reversing each of the bends in the pin starting at the bottom inside where the pin comes out of the cable. Slowly bent it over as much as you can without pushing the top (end) of the pin into other pins or the side of the connector. Then slowly bend the top kink out so it is straight, then bend the remainder of kink out of the lower end of the pin, then make sure the pin is straight so it will seat correctly.

Really would like to know the Make/model of the motherboard as this would allow searching for the manual on the net which would allow those helping to better understand the hardware being used. Touble shooting a all in one motherboard is a little different than trouble shooting a motherboard with all the perphials on seperate cards.

4. have you made sure that none of the Pins on the Monitors (captive) VGA cable got bent and folded over by accident when you hooked the monitor back up?

Bit slow there...

yeah I noticed now that you pointed it out.


To many rods in the fire at this point anyway or peoples be stepping over each others feet, soooo into lurk mode for me

WOuld be interested to know if it has intergrated sound, video and drives. If is does, and the biscuit is dead or dying. Then the on-board might be initialized again even with the ATI installed which would cause soemthing like this also...


[Message Edited]

#9 by BoXXi - 2/15/2004 2:27:08 PM tried the monitor from this system..... no joy

yrag... from this I get that he tried the monitor from the system that works on the system that is not working, the opposite of what you imply by your post in #23...

Shameless Designs - Yeah...you're absolutely right...I read it back wards. That actually is good news 'cause I couldn't understand why the old monitor didn't work on the new system. Be that as it may, I still think it's nothing more then a loose 'screw' somewhere and once he finds it, he'll be good to go......

...and the saga continues

Hi guys...... just got in from work...... The system doesn't make ANY beeping sounds when I turn it on. can a dead CMOS battery stop a puter from booting???!!! I have re-seated the ram, the video card, and the processor. All fans are working. I didn't see any loose wires, but I will check further when I wake up. (been working all night....6am now.....tired)

P.S. I'm CERTAIN it used to beep once when I turned it on. (oh, and the computer is around 6 or 7 years old, and never had a new battery)

Thanks for the help guys, you lot are brilliant and I really appreciate it. (there is quite a bit of stuff on this system that I don't want to lose, so I would love to see it working again)

forgot...... mother board is an Abit BX6...I believe.

WOW...a BX6...been a while since I've seen one of them . Those are not jumperless...so look (use the manual, if you have one) for any missing jumpers (I don't think that's the problem tho). That battery is well pass it's prime and if I had to guess (particularly since you're getting no beep), I would say that's the problem. When the machine was off for an extended time it would have killed what little life it had left. Replace it and when (hopefully) it boots go right in to the Bios 'cause changing the battery will clear it. BTW: one beep at boot is what you should hear. Good luck.





[Message Edited]

So Gary, are you saying a dead cmos battery WILL stop a PC from booting?

Yup........

OK, I will go and get one when I wake up......hopefully that should fix it!! woohoo!!! thanks Gary, you're a star!!!!

No problem, Bryan...let me know..

....Night

hehe....thanks to Mr. P.Martin too, for pointing that one out.

Like I said I am a dumb not-knowing-anything-about-hardware-person so don't mind me but I always tought that a dead cmos battery did only lose all the configuration data.

Bryan....the Abit BX6 is jumperless...[no CPU settings, etc via jumpers].....about the only jumper it has is the clear Cmos one.

My last comp was a BX6 with the P111/500 and a gig of PC133 [running at 100...the max supported]....now it's Terry's machine.

In its time it was a good MoBo, though 550 was it's max CPU and ATA was 33 [I think....was using a Promise 66 PCI card, so I always got that bit mixed].

Pretty safe to say the battery would be an ex-perrot by now...

DOH!!   It's an AH6....not a BX6....... sorry guys!! I think they are pretty much the same though.

Going out to get a battery.......see if that cures it.

the cmos battery is always the first and best place to start...the lil bugger is so overlooked and is usually the culprit in failure to boot, as well as "my pc is acting funny" issues. many times iv seen new teck's (as well as many old teck's)forget your whole pc is dependant on a lil watch battery....many of the older boards have the battery solderd in place and are not worth the messing wit.(even older ones had AA batteries).

AMI BIOS Beep Codes
*Computer gives 1 short beep when system boots successfully.
*Except for beep code 8, these codes are always fatal.
1 beep Refresh failure
2 beeps Parity error
3 beeps Base 64K memory failure
4 beeps Timer not operational
5 beeps Processor error
6 beeps 8042 - gate A20 failure
7 beeps Processor exception interrupt error
8 beeps Display memory read/write failure
9 beeps ROM checksum error
10 beeps CMOS shutdown register read/write error
11 beeps Cache memory bad


AWARD BIOS Beep Codes
1 short: System boots successfully
2 short: CMOS setting error
1 long 1 short: DRAM or M/B error
1 long 2 short: Monitor or display card error
1 long 3 short: Keyboard error
1 long 9 short: BIOS ROM error
Continuous long beeps: DRAM error
Continuous short beeps: Power error

Very helpful, IPlural. Thanks

also check the power supply connector to the motherboard. once mines got shaken loose and took me 3 hours to figure it out

also check your memory.

if you can hear a beep when you turn on, then it might be your hdd ide cable loose.

he said there was no post .. no nothing..

also check the power supply connector to the motherboard. once mines got shaken loose and took me 3 hours to figure it out

Yes...good point....one of the connectors often overlooked...

I've been lurking and I truly hope that Boxxi finds it to be a minor and fixable problem...but two things keep coming back to me. He loaned it out to someone....and no POST....did that person use the computer while it was plugged into an UPS or straight into the outlet? 'Fraid a power spike/surge might have fried it.