Machine won't boot up

I am running Windows XP (SP 2)
CPU: Intel P4 2.4GHz
RAM: 1G DDR 266MHz w/o ECC
on an ASUS P4B533 MotherBoard

I have an In-Win 400W power supply and a GeForce 6800gt Vid card.


OK here's the problem:
When I start up the machine, sometimes I get what sounds like an audible alarm from the mother board and the system won't even boot up the BIOS. Other times it boots up like there is nothing wrong. I know this is an older machine, but I was hoping to get some more use out of it at least until the end of the year. Then I was going to build a new machine.

Does anyone have any ideas what is wrong?

Sure sounds like something is starting to fail in your system. However, make sure everything is firmly attached to your mobo, so at least heat growth/shrinkage is not at fault.

Ok you have to show a geek the sound that it makes, and pay attention the number of beeps that the machine makes when it's trying to boot up. There is actually a code system out there with the beeps, but I don't know any details other than that. If it beeps 3 times, it means one thing, 2 times, another thing, you get the picture.

When my computer failed to boot up, it the cause was that a stick of my memmory had died. A good geek can pinpoint the failure by removing 1 stick at a time, and trying a boot, removing a different stick, and trying to boot. (I wouldn't recommend you trying that yourself, however. Find a geek.)

A computer just won't start if a memmory stick has died, and it remains in there, removing it and placing good sticks in the right places can cure it.

Hard drive failure can also be a concern, if the hard drive that has windows installed on it has an error, the computer will startup and get stuck on a "blackscreen" stage or not startup at all. Getting a friendly person or geek to swap out hard drives and try to restart would be good.

(One time, my mobo had problems (I don't know exactly which kind) and kept causing errors on every hard drive that I installed, so, just getting rid of the mobo itself and reformatting the damaged hard drives solved that problem.)

Also, check if your CPU fan is running. Intel chips (and today's AMD chips) have a heat protection mechanism. If the cooling fan on your CPU won't run, then the overide will kick in and shut down the machine. Take the side off your case and watch the fan blades, see if they spin or not when you first turn it on. Also, the power supply, if it is faulty it can surge voltage (and therefore cause heat) that would trigger that shutdown. (But, I dunno if your computer would start booting at all if this were the case, the power supply can just fry everything if it's bad.)

I also heard once about a lightning strike that struck a house and killed a person's computer. My geek friend began testing the hardware, removing each peice at a time and trying to startup. When he got around to removing the network card (dial-up) the computer started fine without it. (That was it's problem!) When he put it back in, it wouldn't start. (However the strange thing was, when he tried putting that "fried" network card in my own computer it worked, just not in it's original home! File that under W for weird.)

Look at:
http://www.amptron.com/html/bios.beepcodes.html

Now I have to go back to my morse code days.

If memory serves, there were a lot of beeps before the machine shut it's self down. None of those codes are good :(

Thank you all!

:(
hope he will boot good more than not, and if not... hope you'll build a good new one. In every way, good luck :)

You said it does this some times, about how often does it occur? It could be anything from the power supply unit over heating, the CPU over heating (both you can check in the bios). Could also be bad or over heating memory. I have run into this problem before, but as you can probably tell by my questions my problem was over heating. Have you had the computer on during any storms lately when you lost power?

Cmos battery?

I've had some cmos batteries die or weaken on me, so I would definately check that.

But first, I would also either remove the battery and reinstall it, or find the jumper (leave pc power OFF, but cord plugged IN to live outlet) - you need the motherboard to be getting power for this) that will erase the cmos (by putting the jumped on the *other* two pins for a couple seconds, then moving it back to where it was - *always* remember where it was. Find your motherboard manual if you have it, or download a new copy (if you have another machine to use).

I would unplug all devices (to a degree), plugging them in one device at a time and restarting.

Your bios is doing a quick hardware check and beeping because it is finding fault with some device. Either a bad device, or a device conflict, 1/2 connected cable, etc. Check all connections to make sure they are secure and free of dust.

Good luck.

Remember, on the beep thing, each bios/motherboard/chipset probably has a different/hardware specific number of beeps to determine what error is occuring.

Let us know what happens.

You can get new cmos batteries at Radio Shack, and even Walmart (if you able to find them!). Check the battery with a digital multimeter if you have one, if not, just buy a new one.. they are cheap).