yesterday i was playing the witcher. once (druing the ice plains if that matters) the game froze up my pc and i had to do a forced shutdown. when i tried to restart i got a long beep. i took my vid card out and dusted it off a bit and everything started working again. this happened again after the credits of the ending of the witcher rolled. i had to force a shutdown. but, this time i just took the vid card out, didn't dust it, stuck it back in and everything worked fine. then, last night i turned off my pc, everything shut down normally. then i realized i forgot something, tried to turn it back on and got nothing but "eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee"... a long beep. since then i have tried putting ram in different slots, trying different ram, taking my vid card completely apart and dusting it (although i did not reapply the heat paste as i do not have any. whoever decided to put the screws to the fan housing on the bottom so that you have to take off the entire heat sink should be jailed), dusting out the rest of the pc, taking out my tv tuner and sound card and putting the back in after dusting.... i don't know what could be causing this. the system is biostar tforce 550 motherboad amd athlon 5600+ cpu msi 8600 gts oc edition (was till i started fiddling about) 4 gigs gskill ram. i tried my old geil ram and the same problem occurred. and i tried only using one stick and using different slot. and yes, the locks locked in place. chaintech av 710 sound card avermedia tv tuner card corsair hx520w power supply i have also tried unhooking my keyboard with no luck i have no idea what one long beep means as it seems there is not bios code associated with a singular and only one long beep. i should also mention that my screen stays black. i cannot see anything. no bios page, no nothing. i just get one long beep, then silence, then if i press f1 like i normally would on start up my mouse and keyboard lights go off and come back on. when i press the power button to shutdown after this point it takes a second to do so like it would if it's reached the startup page. what do you think is causing the issue?
i've also noticed that if i press f1 after the beep, as i normally would have to do on start up, my mouse light goes off then comes back on and by keyboard lights come on. but i never hear the microsoft start up music. this is using xp 32 by the way. and if i do just need a new vid card, what would be the current ati equivalent to the nvidia 8600 gts?
Hi, I checked the user's manual for your motherboard for the beep codes. Does the one long beep happen every other second or just once then nothing? A long beep every other second means it cant detect the ram. A siren sound means the cpu is overheating, and 1 long followed by 2 short beeps means the video card. The first thing I would do is try the suspected bad hardware in another pc if possible. I would try the video card and Ram in a different computer if you have one available to you. If not, its going to be hard to nail down the problem. If you can do a minimal boot, with everything disconnected except for the cpu (and its fan), 1 stick of ram, and video card to see if it will boot. If it doesnt, try moving the single stick of ram to a different slot, also try different ram too, but it sounds like you already did that part. If you have a different video card, I would try that next. If the problem still persists, the next thing to look at would be the power supply, then system board, and lastly cpu to swap out. Also, check your motherboard to see if any of the capacitors have gone bad. If they are bulging or leaking, they (and motherboard) are no good any more.
the caps all seem good. and it's one long beep followed by silence. unfortunately i have no other pc to swap parts out with (this pc is ever older than mine.) would it be wrong to order a vid card and send it back if it doesn't work? and what ati card nowadays would match up to the power of the 8600gts?
i'm pretty sure it's not the ram now. when i remove all ram and start it i get one long and then one short beep. but with the ram in, either ram and in any configuration that is, i just get one loooooong beep followed by silence.
i should mention that there is no way for me to read the manual as this pc will not allow adobe reader to work. i have no idea why. but it seems the description of beeps in the manual do not match up to the beeps i'm getting.
and now, with everything installed but no ram it gives me no beeps. the beeps to do not match what the manual says.
i thought all i was getting was one long beep, but it may be one long followed by two short beeps. have you ever heard a brass instrument gurgle while someone played it because they hadn't emptied the spit out of it? it's kinda like that. what i'm getting may be "beeeeeeeepbeepbeep" instead of the "beeeeeeep beep beep" i was expecting. there are no pauses between the beeps at all. with the room quiet it does sound almost like one long and two short, but with NO pauses between beeps. and also, for some reason it's stopped beeping at all when no ram is in. is there any chance it could be the motherboard battery?
Usually if the cmos battery goes bad, the computer will still POST but you will get errors or a message on the screen that settings have reset. You could try manually resetting the bios by removing the battery and unplugging the power cord. Then hold down the power button for 10-20 seconds to discharge the board. Then put the battery back in and try booting up and see if that makes a difference. If you think you are hearing 1 long and 2 short beeps, that would mean there is a problem with the video card. This would make sense especially since you said it worked after you reseated the video card at first, indicating its something to do with the video card or the slot its plugged into. Also, if the card requires an extra power connector from the power supply and the power supply is failing, that might make the motherboard think the video is failing as well. I looked for comparable cards to the 8600 GTs one but most of today's current cards are much faster. Back when it was first out, the the ati 2600xt was its closest competitor, but the cards out today are much better than that one. You can see some of the charts for the newer cards here Benchmarks 2010 Gaming Graphics Charts (High Quality) . As for buying one to test and returning it, you would need to check with whatever store you are buying from for the return policy on that.
I don't know if this will be of some help to you but, a few years back i had the same exact problem (same long beep) and i discovered it was either my video card itself or the pin connectors. At times my computer would start up with no problem and sometimes i would get a very long beep followed by a blank screen. So i unplugged my monitor from my ancient GeForce MX200 and noticed the VGA output looked a bit messed up. There might have been a pin or two stuck in there. Anyway, to remedy the problem i proceeded to perform this ritual african giggle movement on the cable after connecting it ever so slowly to the VGA output on the MX200 and before i knew it a POST screen popped up and a normal short beep echoed in the air. So i knew the culprit was my graphics card. And i believe its yours in disguise. Try to borrow a friends card if you can and replace it.
(edit: i hope it's not the power supply. mine has two outputs for graphic card cables and i tried both.). it must be the video card! and you know why? because my num lock works! cpu, ram and motherboard mus work for num lock to work! (according to the tech support guy anyway. he wouldn't be wrong would he?) they must! this card will work with my board, right? Biostar USA Newegg.com - SAPPHIRE 100253HDMI Radeon HD 4650 512MB 128-bit GDDR2 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Low Profile Ready Video Card i'm just wondering because i don't know if i have an older version of pci express 16 on my board or not.
Hi, Pci express 2.0 video cards should be backwards compatible with a pci express 16x slot like the one on your system board, but it may not run to its maximum capacity. I dont see why the above card would not work for you. Just one thing though, it says its a low profile card which means if you do not have a low profile computer case (a thin one in comparison to a mid or full size tower) you may need to take the metal bracket off the card and swap it with the one from your current video card to make it fit. Its usually just a screw plus the screws that the video cable end plugs into to take it off. But once plugged into the motherboard, it should work.
