Pulling my hair out

fartingspartan · 21 Feb 2013 at 08:53

Hi Everyone,

Looking for some old-school troubleshooting advice...

Set a pc up for someone - HP Workstation type - every thing fine for first few weeks, then started getting weird issue where pc after being turned on would cycle reboot without showing anything on screen ie really quickly, power light on front would flash red and you would get 6 cmos beeps each time.

Then MB would boot saying memory (RAM) had changed - had 6GB in it, would sometimes show 3,4 or 2 etc.

RAM was from another machine that was working fine so presumed MB issue so got another HP workstation and used RAM in that and setup - without an issue, ran for days at mines.

Took system to friends house, plugged in, all fine.
Plugged his USB HD in and system wouldn't boot.....then after few reboots - quick boot/mem message appeared on screen.

So simply - does it look like faulty memory or could it be something more complex?

Everything is different apart from the memory but the memory worked/works fine in another system.

Trying to hunt down the particular PC model on HP website to see what 6 beeps mean.

Any advice appreciated.

Also - Forgot to add - I removed one of the RAM chips and it booted fine...but then 2 days later started doing it again, with the RAM stick I removed still out of it.

SGWills · 21 Feb 2013 at 08:59

when you tried a different station was it the same spec as your friends machine? possible it could be a fussy MB and ram combo if it was a different MB you tried at your house.

Doomedspeed · 21 Feb 2013 at 08:59

Are the HDD boot options set right? Yo boot from primary hard drive not external?

That would explain why it wouldn't boot with an external hhd plugged in..

Roalith · 21 Feb 2013 at 09:11

Motherboard shorting on case?

Gibbo3771 · 21 Feb 2013 at 09:40

It could be a range of things, first make sure it's not trying to boot from the wrong thing, it might be trying to boot off the USB.

Secondly make sure you have the motherboard rised off the case like the above poster said.

Secondly make sure the memory is the same clock, perhaps the motherboard is underclocking 3gb of it and changing the voltages on all the sticks to bring them in line.

When you setup a rig with 2 different speeds of ram, it normally clocks down the faster ram to the same speed as the slower ram.

Try using just 1 stick of RAM and try it in each slot to rule out any faulty slots, do this with each stick, see if you can find a faulty one.

jwink86 · 21 Feb 2013 at 14:00

You could use MemTest86 to test the RAM individually. Also you may have more luck finding your beep code on the BIOS manufacturers website rather than looking through the maze that is the HP website.