last seen 1 week 5 days agoI just built a new PC. I assembled & installed all hardware as it should be & loaded windows. The computer ran fine for approx 4 hours. During that time, I started loading drivers for the networking card & all hardware that is built in to the mother board. After each installation, the computer would automatically restart. after the third one, it shut down & never restarted. When I tried to restart it, It began beeping 5 long high beeps & 11 or 12 very fast low beeps. It will do this twice then shut down. I figured that a circuit shorted in the motherboard, so I replaced it & the prosessor, but it's doing the same thing, even with everything unplugged from it. If I remove the RAM cache, it ONLY beeps 3 low long beeps & power unit stays on. I didn't replace the ram or power unit. I'm not sure if the ram is just defective, or i'm having bad luck with motherboards. I was wandering if anyone could assist me on this problem.
What I have:
Intel DG33FB motherboard
Intel Core 2 Quad prosessor
Raidmax 500w power unit
kingston 1 GB PC2-6400 DDR2 RAM
seagate SATA/300 barracuda 500gb HD
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I looked for the beep codes and found this (http://www.intel.com/support/motherboards/desktop/sb/cs-010249.htm), but you probably already saw that in your board manual as it sounds like you took the right steps with the 5 beeps. It will beep 3 times with no memory. You did remember to use the standoffs when mounting the board? Make sure nothing is causing a ground (a screw, piece of metal, etc.) I’m no expert, but that’s what I would focus on. Ashton and Isaac are usually pretty good on the tech side.
Thanks CM, I used standoffs. As I said, the computer operated perfectly for about 4 hours. Iv'e checked for anything that would've grounded any part of the motherboard . I looked up beep codes for that particular motherboard on the intel website & one actually referred to the ram. But I don't want to replace the ram unless i'm sure thats what it is.
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Check the memory by creating a bootable cd with this link.
http://www.memtest.org/
Let it do a minimum of one pass. If there is a problem, an error will show up on the interface. Obviously set your BIOS to boot cd in the boot order and re-seat your memory - which I'm sure you have done.
For giggles, diagnose the hard drive with a bootable media from this link.
http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/downloads/seatools
Thats what we can do for starters...
Keep us posted.
I do not feel obliged to believe that same God who endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect had intended for us to forgo their use. -Galileo Galilei
actually, it starts beeping right when the switch is turned on & before the CD rom has time to start. I'm probably going to replace the ram & see what happens.
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I got it running. It was a faulty RAM chip. I bought 4 2gb chips & bumped it up to 8gb.
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Thats' good to hear.
Just to clarify and summarize - Memtest86 tests your RAM by throwing a series of numbers (ones and zeros - 8 bit) at your memory and seeing if any errors occur in the process (Okay, not the most technical explanation, I admit).
It's come highly recommended that when you buy a new computer or upgrade your memory that the first thing thing you do is create a CD that you're going to boot into - before the operating system loads - to test your memory chips, sticks and what not, by downloading the bootable program provided by the link below.
It wasn't the CD ROM that was being tested.
I'm glad you got it up and running. I would still try the memtest86+ as you're still working with new memory sticks.
I do not feel obliged to believe that same God who endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect had intended for us to forgo their use. -Galileo Galilei