No POST, beeps or anything much....

moggsy

moggsy

moggsy

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No POST, beeps or anything much....***UPDATED***

Hi all ( - this first post edited....)

I RMA'd my board (system as in my sig...) after turning on my machine last week and getting a series of long constant beeps during the POST which according to the manual, indicated a GPU faullt....

I replaced the Radeon HD3850 with a passively cooled HD2400 and got the same beeping error tone!

I assumed it was faulty and after a call to OC's tech support and describing the fault and measures taken, got an RMA number and sent it back.

However, I got the board back today saying no fault fouund, board fully posts!!

Great, here we go I thought.

I put everything back together again, switched on.... but now I don't get ANY beeps at all - infact, it appears to momentarily spring to life when pressing the power button, but almost immediately (within 3-4secs) switches off and tries to restart, and continues in a loop doing the same thing.

Watching what's happening inside the case, reveals that the exhaust fan at the rear of the case spins up instantly, followed for a split second by the coolers fan, but then it's switched itself off again and attempting to restart over and over.....

I've tried one stick of ram, swapped them over so the other stick is in on it's own, but still got the same result.

My thoughts:

Dodgy power supply or maybe a fried CPU (even though it's clocked, it idles at about 46*C with about 58*C at full load - which is only ever for short a period anyway...)

Any other suggestions...?

EDIT: (plz bear with me a bit as it's doing my head in ....)

I must've put the HSF on skew-whiff coz after re-seating it and re-applying the paste, it stopped the cycle described.....and posted...BUT (read on plz....).....after replacing the mobo into the case and retrying succesfully and posting OK, added all the bits and bobs one at a time untill system was back as it was before all this pallava began!!

Everything ran fine for about 10-14 days (at stock).....then one night, the graphics/monitor started displaying a purpleish hue on everything when just browsing the net normally!

Restarting things never rectified it and as it was late, decided to investigate further in the morning!

Come the morning....no post....beeping as before.....back to square 1 :mad:

I've just started troubleshooting things again.

I've unplugged all HDD's so just got GPU, RAM, CPU-HSF, K/B&Mouse plugged in.....(inside case)

Same beeps.

Tried alternative (known good) PSU...with the same result (one thing here....the beep code goes 3 beeps (pause) 8 beeps, and does the 8 beeps 5 times, then shuts itself down for about 5 secs, restarts, 3 beeps (pause) then continues beeping infinitely......)

Re-connected original PSU which then produced the same beep pattern!!

I'm thinking intermittent mobo fault as I've read reports of similar beep codes with this board after working flawlessly for weeks/months.....which could explain why the board posted OK for the RMA rather than some hardware of mine having an intermittent fault too!! :confused:

Before you suggest these things, this is what I've tried....

mobo outside of case....with case speaker connected

Mobo,1 stick of alternative ram in slot 1,original GPU, kb&m - same beeps

Mobo, 1 stick of alt (& later, orig) ram in slot 1 (and also) slot 3, alternative GPU kb&m - same beeps....(see why it's doing my head in?? :rolleyes: )

To me, everything points to a dodgy mobo....but I've RMA'd it once and they've said it was OK.....bit stuck as to my next move....

Any ideas?

Ta peeps.....
 
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Hmmmmm well Crucial Ballistix is well known for dying, and it's not unusual for two sticks to die at the same time, so I'd recommend buying a dirt-cheap stick of memory to test with.

Which PSU do you have?
 
Cob said:
Hmmmmm well Crucial Ballistix is well known for dying, and it's not unusual for two sticks to die at the same time, so I'd recommend buying a dirt-cheap stick of memory to test with.

Which PSU do you have?
Click to expand...
Hmmm interesting...btw,thanks for the quick reply Cob...


The PSU is the one that came with the Antec case - an Earthwatts EA500W...
 
PSU *should* be grand. Might not be the memory, but it's certainly worth checking out first.
 
I've got a mate bringing a different PS tomorrow, just to try the bare min hardware with....I have some other ram to try too!!
 
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Vimes said:
Even though I share the same board I can't help you except to point you here...

http://forums.tweaktown.com/f69/

unless of course you have already posted there...?

http://forums.tweaktown.com/f69/ga-p35c-ds3r-three-beeps-no-post-26545/

BTW from the 21st Aug (when you first posted) to 12th Sept, when you edited and bumped the thread, what has happened...?
Click to expand...
Thanks for looking Vimes....That's one of the threads I've been following too.... ;)

What's happened since the 21st Aug, is in the edited 1st post of this thread...
 
moggsy said:
Thanks for looking Vimes....That's one of the threads I've been following too.... ;)

What's happened since the 21st Aug, is in the edited 1st post of this thread...
Click to expand...

..ah I see. I was looking for a follow-up and noticed that you have marked an update within post 1 but I would have just posted the update in a new post, anyway...

Have you tried simply removing the mains lead from the PSU and placing a jumper on the clear cmos pins on the board and then leaving it like that for thirty minutes or so..?


The reason as to why I posted the above link is that I thought you could enlist the official support of Gigabyte themselves and perhaps return the board to them for testing..?

I have not been able to find a list of Award BIOS codes and so I have never been sure what numbers and patterns of beeps mean, if indeed they have any significance.?

The only time that anything like that has happened to my board is when I have entered unstable settings in the BIOS and it has looped several times in a beeping / fan / reboot sequence until it has been able to enter default type settings to over write my own, that it why I have suggested the cmos jumper thing.
 
Sorted!!! ;)

Turned out to be a bad stick of ram!!!

All the swap out testing I did earlier was when it refused to power up at all - that was rectified by re-seating the heatsink - it then powered up.....but still had the beeps coz the bad stick was still in the mobo when it powered up.

There were then umpteen swap outs trying to get it working, but then it posted with the good stick out of the two I have....BUT....it also posted when I re-inserted the (then unknown) dodgy stick....and ran fine for a while as I said....but it's dodginess revealed itself again eventually. :p

This time, with just the beeps to troubleshoot, it was easier to find. After swapping, the PSU, graphics it was onto the ram....the 1st stick I took out was the good one of the two so the it still wouldn't post, but when I took that one out and put the other (good) stick in, it posted fine...and just to confirm it, I put the bad one back in and beeped away again.

Now I'm a gig down on my ram for a bit....but at least my pooter's OK again....when I get my replacement stick, I'll won't be pushing this ram so far next time... :D ....though to be fair, it's been solid at my sig specs for 12 months, but looks like it was pushing it a bit too far, tbh!!

So to summarise, if anyone has an award bios with the same beep tones I was getting; 3 beeps (pause) constant short(ish) beeps, look to your RAM first :rolleyes:
 
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