orangeghost

Brief Summary:
System starts up and the single beep for post happens, but then the system immediately restarts. Occasionally, I can see the bios splash screen for a fraction of a second before the restart but usually not. Specs follow below.

More Detail:
I built this system in January and it was working great until one day, while playing WoW, I got a blue screen for about half a second (too fast to write anything down) and then the machine restarted. Once back in Windows, I got a prompt that said "Your system just recovered from a serious error." I clicked OK because that was the only option.
So, I ran virus/adware/spyware scans and disk check with no issues found. Went back to playing WoW and after just a couple minutes, got the same blue screen.

After that, the system started in on the behavior described above with the repeated restarts. I can't get it to go to bios or safe mode. I spoke with Corsair about the possibility of it being the PSU and they had me do a test on the unit involving shorting two pins in it and forcing the fan to spin up. It passed this test so I didn't send it in for RMA.

* Tested each RAM stick and new RAM, no change.
* Unplugged the reset switch, no change.
* Tried booting with no drives, just PSU, CPU/HSF, RAM and Video Card, no change.

After all that, I RMAed the Mobo and got a "repaired" board back. Not sure if they just sent back my board or if they actually did something. It could be a different board that was repaired from a different RMA.

With the "repaired" board, I bread-boarded the components (hooked them up outside the case). Got long beeps when powering up with no RAM. 1 long 2 short with 1 RAM stick and the same with 2. Once I hooked up the video card, the restart behavior began again.

Interestingly, when I shorted the power switch jumper with a screw driver, the system shut down before any beeps. Maybe it's a fail-safe of some kind? So I had to actually plug the power switch from my case into the board. I was worried that this wouldn't ferret out a possible issue with the power switch, but I think that can be ruled out based on the behavior I saw.

At this point, it seems like a problem related to the video card. Would this be the card itself or could it be PCI-E slot? Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance, I hope this wasn't too long-winded, but I find it best to get all of the information out there at first to avoid the need for questions.

Specs:
Win XP
GIGABYTE GA-EP45-UD3R LGA 775 Intel P45 ATX Intel Motherboard
Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 Wolfdale 3.0GHz
MASSCOOL 8WA741 92mm Ball CPU Cooler
EVGA GeForce 9800 GTX+
G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 1066
Western Digital Caviar Black WD1001FALS 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb
SATA 350 GB HDD. (can't remember make/model)
PSU: Corsair TX650W
Aspire, X-Dreamer 2 Case (Need a new case )
Generic IDE DVD-R
Lite-On SATA DVD-RW

dai

the bios beep code says this

1long, 2 short
Video adapter error
Either video adapter is bad or is not seated properly.
Also, check to ensure the monitor cable is connected properly.

you can find this information here

www.bioscentral.com

orangeghost

Sorry, maybe I didn't explain that part well enough... When it has no video card at all, I get the 1 long 2 short.. I was trying to test the memory at that point, so that would be expected.

Once I hook on the video card and monitor, I get the continuous restart behavior described above. The point being that before I hook up the video card, the system is behaving as expected, with the proper beep codes, but after the video card is installed, is when things go bad.

That being said, it is very possible that you are correct and the video adapter is bad, however the beep codes aren't indicating such.

dai

try a cmos reset and see if you can bring up the bios and access safe mode

disconnect the front switch from the m/b and try starting it by touching the pins for a fraction of a second with a screwdriver

orangeghost

Should I do that while I have the reset cmos jumper in the reset position? I'm not exactly clear if you meant this to be a separate step or part of the reset. I was under the impression that a board shouldn't be powered up in this state.

What should happen when I touch the screwdriver to the power switch pins other than for the machine to start up?

Thanks!

Reset cmos based on the motherboard manual's instructions. No change.

dai

it's 2 different steps

touching the 2 pins for a fraction of a second just mimics what the front case button does and checks if there is a problem with the button

it starts the computer if it is off

closes it down if it is on

orangeghost

Thanks for that clarification. I'll try that out.

orangeghost

Tried out touching the power switch pins to turn the system on and didn't see any change. After that I removed the graphics card and blasted the PCI-e slot with a compressed air can and reseated the card. This appears to have corrected the problem. Something is really touchy in there though, after I connected the HDD and optical drive to begin installing the OS, the same behavior began again.

After repeating the air blast and reseating procedure, it started working correctly again. Could this mean that there might be something stuck in there? I don't see how anything could have gotten in there while the card was installed and the machine was closed up. Simply reseating the graphics card didn't do anything, but blowing out the slot seemed to help.

dai

try cleaning the cards contacts with a rubber eraser

orangeghost

I'll give that a shot. It's very unstable right now. It was getting to bios for a while but when I tried installing Windows XP, it was either freezing or not recognizing my USB keyboard (even though it worked fine in bios), so I couldn't even really start Windows setup. Tried installing Windows 7 and it didn't even get to a menu, it just hung on the "Loading Data" progress bar.

After that happened a couple of times (tried different optical drives), it went back to the repeated restart behavior.

Going to see if cleaning the video card contacts helps with this.

dai

also check in the bios that theses are enabled

pnp

highspeed or usb2

orangeghost

Tried eraser on the video card contacts with no change. As of now, I can't get to bios because the machine restarts. I wish I had a spare video card I could try to see if that's actually what's causing this issue. Will see if I can get it to be stable enough to let me in to bios and check those settings. From memory, I think they are enabled.

dai

unplug the power plug from the drives and see if you can access the bios

try with only 1 stick of ram in and make sure it is seated

orangeghost

Have already tried that without success but I'll give it another shot.

dai

check for a bios update