WOT: PC help needed..... Options

[scottb]

wifes pc has begun to behave strangely and i am fairly certain she has a virus. given that there is not much of import on her system, i decided a clean start with a new drive is the way to go.

so i pulled the old drive, hooked up the new one, and all the system does is give me a long beep, silence, long beep and there is no response with the monitor. i have tried to turn the cpu off and restart but the same thing happens. i am angry now and nearly ready to give the piece of shit the boot. any input would be appreciated......

muchas gracias....

[Bleyseng]

Use a BFH when you take it outside..... (IMG:http://www.914world.com/bbs2/html/emoticons/smash.gif) (IMG:http://www.914world.com/bbs2/html/emoticons/smash.gif) (IMG:http://www.914world.com/bbs2/html/emoticons/smash.gif)

Works well for me. (IMG:http://www.914world.com/bbs2/html/emoticons/smile.gif)

[415PB]

Out of curiosity.Why didn't you just wipe the hard drive with the re-intall disc? What kind of PC and which hard drive did you purchase?

[Aaron Cox]

uh..you gotta reload an OS i think (IMG:http://www.914world.com/bbs2/html/emoticons/wink.gif)

[Qarl]

Couple of things.

1. If it is an older PC, you may need to have the BIOS set to the hard drive
specs. When you reboot, watch the screen prompts, and press either Delete, F1 or F10 to enter the BIOS settings. Typically it is the Delete key

2. Go to the section (you can navigate between screens with the tab and/or arrow buttons) where you can detect your Primary IDE settings. There is usually an autodetect feature.

3. Try and reboot and see if it recognizes the drive. You can usually tell if it is recognized because you can see the hard drive listed on the startup screen that flashes that shows memory, CD-ROM, floppy, CPU speed, COM port settings, etc.

Or..

1. Yuu may have connected your hard drive cable wrong. There is a red stripe on the hard drive cable that connects the motherboard to the hard drive. Look at the back of the hard drive where the cable connects. Pin #1 on the connector is labeled on the back of the drive. The red side of the hard drive cable goes on the side where pin #1 is located.

or...

There are some jumpers on the back of the hard drive. These are little tiny black or white rectangular connectors that connect across pairs of pins. Make sure that the jumper is across the pair of pins that is labeled Master. Usually your main drive is set up as Master. It may also be Cable Select. I usually use Master.

or...

Check all of your connections. You may have bumped the memory card loose, or the hard drive cable came disconnected at the motherboard side.

or...

BFH

[scottb]

one of the problems is the monitor won't show what the system is doing. if i could get in there, i could f(*& with the bios.

i checked all the cable connections to make certain they are in place. even put everything back the way it was originally. same thing... long beep... silence... repeat.....

i made sure the jumpers on the new hard drive were set for the master and had all other drives disconnected when i originally started. but when i tried to put things back... see above.

strange thing is it worked this morning (sort of). would power up fine, load all software but when i tried to use IE or outlook, it would show an error and offer to send a report. tried to run spybot and it would reach a certain level then some warning in german would come up and the system would reboot. also would not allow me to update my virus settings on avast.

should have included this info previously but i was a little annoyed.

many thanks for the feed back.... time for another (IMG:http://www.914world.com/bbs2/html/emoticons/beer3.gif)

[skline]

Ok, Step back for a minute, open the PC back up again and make sure all cards are seated all the way in each slot. Check the memory also. It sounds like you just have something loose. The beep is telling you there is something not right. After you make sure everything is seated, fire it up without the side cover on. Also make sure all your cables are seated all the way. It should fire up.

[vortrex]

the beeping pattern is a code for what the problem is. look up the model of your motherboard and see if you can find the docs on it. also, I think the video adapter is the first thing to POST in the boot up, so you might want to look there first.

[BPGREER]

Didn't you see my post. That's reason #461 I bought a Mac. I literally went through 4 pc's in the past 5 years. Macs don't get virus' (or so I'm told). So far I am totally thrilled with it! Seriously though, I hope you can fix your problem. I had so many issues with virus', spyware, glitches, etc. I'm not much of a computer guy, so I just get pissed. It's bad enough at work where we have tech guys (and gals (IMG:http://www.914world.com/bbs2/html/emoticons/biggrin.gif) ) to take care of that stuff. Good luck!

Brian (IMG:http://www.914world.com/bbs2/html/emoticons/smile.gif)

[sgomes]

I'm not entirely sure but a dead CMOS battery might also cause it to fail to boot. How old is this thing? If it's somewhere north of 10 years you might want to replace the battery.

[Spoke]

If you put in a disk w/o the proper operating system on it or the proper drivers for your PC, it won't start. Sounds like the new disk has nothing on it.

Here's what I did to clean my disk of viruses. First, my PC wouldn't start. I thought I lost the hard drive. So I inserted a DOS floppy disk just to get a prompt and I could see my C:/ drive and I could see that all the programs and directories were there. So I removed my drive and took it to a friend's house and put it in as the second hard drive in his system. This was done by using the second IDE connector on his computer. When booted up, my drive was his D:/ drive and we ran Norton Antivirus on it. There were 1600 files that were corrupted and were cleaned. Put the disk back in my computer and everything was fine.

If you don't have antivirus software, buy it.

Sorry if this explanation is detailed. Maybe the best thing to do is find someone you know who knows PCs and have them come over and look at it. Somehow, fixing PCs is a lot easier when sitting in front of the PC.

Spoke

[bd1308]

alright....your beeping is caused from memory being bad or not beign seated correctly...take out and replace. The video being loose would not warrant a POST beep. I've been through computers ever since I was 5 or 6. The hard drive connections being wrong would just make BIOS not recognize them. I am positive on the memory thing. The instability is usually either bad ram or CPU heat issues. Look at the CPU fan and see if it spins freely when powered up. pm me if you need any other help. BIOS battery would also not give the beep, just a POST error and a reset of CMOS settings and date.

[scottb]

ok, pulled out the right bank of the memory and put these rambus continuity modules in their place. beeping stopped but still no response from the monitor. any suggestions? monitor was working just fine yesterday morning. i know things can drop dead quickly but this quickly?

muchas gracias....

[Pnambic]

QUOTE (bd1308 @ Feb 28 2005, 10:21 AM)

alright....your beeping is caused from memory being bad or not beign seated correctly...take out and replace. The video being loose would not warrant a POST beep. I've been through computers ever since I was 5 or 6. The hard drive connections being wrong would just make BIOS not recognize them. I am positive on the memory thing. The instability is usually either bad ram or CPU heat issues. Look at the CPU fan and see if it spins freely when powered up. pm me if you need any other help. BIOS battery would also not give the beep, just a POST error and a reset of CMOS settings and date.

I agree with almost all of this. But I have seen HDD's keep a system from booting on the rare occassion when the IDE cable was incorrectly installed though.

1.) Remove everything but the bare necessities...leave only the motherboard, processor/fan, video card (if not onboard), RAM and floppy in the case. You should at least be able to get to the Bios this way. Use a Dos Boot Disk/Win98 boot disk if you want to be sure things are working.

2.) Add one item at a time. First the HDD, then the CD/DVD (one at a time if you have more than one). Reboot after each addition to make sure the system is still working.

It would help to have MB make and model number. If you don't know, get the FCC code (most times printed between the PCI slots) and it can be looked up. It would also help to know what type of RAM you're using. Be as specific as you can. Is it new? Been sitting on a shelf for the last year? How large?

Recent similar problem centered around MB bios not having an update to handle a new processor. Gave no beep though....just started the fans and disks spinning and thats all. If the MB bios got scrambled somehow, (maybe you accidentally grounded it when installing the new HDD? (IMG:http://www.914world.com/bbs2/html/emoticons/confused24.gif) ) you might be screwed and need a new MB? Tough to tell just yet.