MikEe07

Hi,

I've just recently received a new 1gb of DDR400 RAM. Before this new addition I already have 1.5gb of ram installed (3x512's). As the story goes I had undone my case today and removed one of the old sticks of ram as one normally would, and in its place I plugged in the new 1gb stick. I went to turn on the computer (hadn't since the night before) and it did switch on, however it did not boot up, both info lights stayed lit up [power and hardrive] and the cd drives were blinking constantly. There was no picture on screen either, I run my computer through an lcd tv and the picture usually comes up within seconds... I tried removing all three sticks of RAM and only putting in the new one, no different response, I also tried replacing the three older ones as they were, and stilll the same situation. The computer was working fine last night and the only thing I can recall that I did differently before going to bed was a force shutdown (using FreeRAM XP pro) because it was not responding when I clicked the shutdown option, I have done this countless times before with no consequence so I find no reason for it to do anything differently now. The power/reset buttons are both not working, as well as both of my cd/dvd drives eject buttons. I am no tech in this area but I feel as if its either the main hardrive or the motherboard itself. If i could please have anyones suggestions as to why this is happening I would be very grateful?

(Another note I would like to quickly make is that every now and then I get blue screen errors from windows and the operating system is shut down and the memory dumped, after this occurance one day I attempted a defrag of my main drive (C:) and was told that there was an error on the disk... so i scheduled a scan of it next time it restarted but it came back clear, after that the defrag ran without any problems, very confusing!)

Thanks.

Tumbleweed36

Put the old ram back in the way it was and then clear the cmos and see if that helps. If that gets you going, then try the new ram again, assuming that it is compatible and similar to what is already in there.

What happens sometime is that with a hard shutdown, it corrupts the bios setup menu by not saving everything correctly and clearing the cmos bring it back to the default setting.

MikEe07

Thanks alot tumbleweed. I'll give it a shot later on and tell you how it goes.

MikEe07

Well, we cleared the cmos after placing the old memory back but to no avail...Everything is exactly the same, no signal on the monitor, flashing cd drives... and the info lights [power/hardrive] are still idle, no flashing just constantly on. I'm guessing it's a hardware problem then?

Tumbleweed36

My best guess is hardware. Try it with only one stick of ram and check the manual to see which slot to put it in. If that does not work, try another stick and keep doing that to make sure it is not a bad ram stick.

Also, when you cleared the CMOS, did you remember to unplug the computer from the outlet. Also, did you change the jumper or remove the battery to clear the cmos?

Start tracing wires to make sure something is not loose in that case. If you have a Sata drive, check that first, because those come loose quite often.

Do you get a post beep?

MikEe07

We have tried the ram and it is not making a difference, we're going to test each ram stick individually in another system to make sure they are ok.
we pulled out the battery for a good 10 minutes and that did nothing so i'm stumped.
i dont have a sata drive so thats not an issue, and i'm pretty sure that all the wires are fine.

There is no post beep. Maybe due to the case speaker not being plugged in.

MikEe07

Any more suggestions?
Could the motherboard be a goner?

Tumbleweed36

You could build it out of the case on a non-conductive surface like a piece of cardboard starting with only the motherboard, cpu, heatsink fan plugged into motherboard and one stick of ram with atx plug. +12 molex, and off/on switch. If it begins to boot, then add something.

MikEe07

Hello again.

Tried all that you've said and still no difference =(. Both me and my dad are guessing the mobo has kicked the bucket.

Tumbleweed36

NOrmally, if you can't get the post beep from a board, then it is the board. ONe more thing...take the ram out (be sure you have the speaker plugged in) and see if it starts beeping because of no ram. If not, then I would guess your board is gone. If so, then post back and we will keep looking at other options.

MikEe07

Nope, it doesn't beep. And we've tried another older board in the same case and without ram it beeps so the case and speaker must be fine... It's a shame because its a slightly older motherboard i have, 478 pin... and they are really no longer sold except over ebay so I have to buy a new motherboard, and with that a new processor I guess.

Tumbleweed36

Is the motherboard light on and does it stay on while plugged in?
Have you checked the Off/on button for the computer case?

Note: I really like those 478 boards so I know what you mean. In fact have the Asus P4C800-e deluxe in my spare computer at the present time. Since it is old, going to give it a new home in the near future when I build another new one, but you have it right, they are simply a great board.

MikEe07

Yep a great board with all too little recognition =(. It has lasted me 5 years with very constant use with not a problem in sight till now, so its been a blessing.
The on/off button works turning the computer on but both that and the reset button fail to function afterwards while the computer is active. both LED's at the front stay on constantly, and cd/dvd drives appear to be searching for something continuously...
If you're referring to a light on the actual motherboard I'm fairly certain there isn't one.

We have actually already ordered a new board sadly, it supports both my old DDR400 RAM, so what I've just bought will not be a complete waste, and newer [ I think DDR2 or something like that...] and a new dual core processor.

MikEe07

Welll, after replacing all old hardware with compatible hardware on the new motherboard, we have run into another snag. It seems the master harddrive of mine is "capable and status BAD" opposed to my other one which says "OK" according to S.M.A.R.T, after that info it doesn't continue any further... Maybe this and the faulty motherboard was cause for my computer not to post properly? But either way I'm going to try and install windows on my seperate harddrive after formatting it and attempt to 'rescue' my personal files, if that fails then well I'll bite the bullet and start anew. Do you have any other ideas?

Thanks for everything thus far tumbleweed.

Tumbleweed36

S.M.A.R.T. is most of the time very accurate. Might be a good idea to download the utility from the hard drive manufacturer and see if that can fix any errors that might be there. If that does not help, then I would put that drive as a slave in a known working computer and see if you can get it to work. If so, then it would work in your computer if you put the OS on another drive.

Let us know if we can help in this process.

MikEe07

Yeah, well the other day when we tried the corrupt hdd in another computer with a working OS it worked, ran scandisk and corrected somee files, however my drive which was now the slave, still registered as C: drive on the the seperate computer, at the startup of windows it said that the computers hardware had drastically changed and that it would be operational once again in 3 days, ...the issue there is that it appeared that my own hard drive was working as a master, even though it was set as a slave. Once we can get windows installed on one of my other hard drives then maybe we can progress, the next problem is...it's completely new system[apart from the DDR400 mem from the old system], yet windows will not install! My dad bought a new SATA hard drive 500gb and a SATA DVD drive... the DVD was faulty and corrupted the bios so we had to reset it, but even after we changed to a working cd drive the windows cd was still not working correctly, S.M.A.R.T came up all clear but after that screen it was either blank or an eventual purple screen follows {Note that I am using a digital monitor, should i try with a standard analog?} So so far our attempts at making windows install on the new drive have been futile.

I am beginning to think I am cursed with technology haha. Please any more ideas will be greatly helpful.

MikEe07

It is still an objective for me to salvage what I can from the bad hard drive if possible because I have personal files/documents going back the last 3 years, hopefully where there's a will there's a way!

Tumbleweed36

Mike, the reason it said hardware had changed in the other computer was because the data on your hard drive is looking for your old setup and the hardware is different on the other computer you had it hooked up to.

Download the hard drive manufacturer's utility and then put your drive back in the computer you had it in, connected the same way that it worked before and then run the drive against the manufacturer's utility. Some times that helps a bunch, even if scandisk didn't do the complete job for you. There will be data lost with the manufacturer's utility, unless you tell the utility to format the drive...don't format or you lose your data.

A step at a time...do this and see what happens.

MikEe07

So I should put my hard drive into the working system.... then run the utility through windows? We will attempt it soon, but one other thing, how is it that windows will not install on the completely new hard drive? All i get is a purple screen when trying to start the computer..

Tumbleweed36

Sorry, that one passed me by, I must have missed that while reading your first post. However, after reviewing, I do see it up there now. Anyhow, let's start with that and worry about the old drive later.

Walk me through what new hard drive you want to install and then let's get that done first. If it is a Sata, what brand, how do you have it hooked up, and have you enabled Sata in the bios setup menu?

Assuming it is Sata, what do you have hooked up on the IDE connection? What, how jumpered, and where on the ribbon cable.

When you changed the board, what board do you have in there right now? Is it still the same model?