Computer Startup Issues

[Kira]

I've been having this issue on and off now for a while. When I start up most computers, I get a "BEEP!", and it starts normally. Recently, mine has been doing three: "BEEP! BEE BEEP!", and then refusing to display anything on the monitor, where the activity LED stays amber instead of turning green as it would for a normal start.

I've discovered that when this three beep thing happens, sometimes it helps to unplug everything from the computer, ports, power, internet, the works, then plug them all back in again (annoying!). So this has me thinking the issue has something to do with quality of connection somewhere along the line.

Unfortunately, that's all the information I have, other than that I've decided to hibernate the thing once I get it started now rather than turn it off for short periods!

Thanks for any help.

Kira

[Jabo]

I think 3 beeps is usually memory related. Try running a utility like memcheck on eash stick in turn to try and isolate the problem.

Jabo

[B16Enk]

reseat your RAM would be step 1, see if that fixes it.

If Win 7 you can use diagnosticcs o check RAM, press F8 during post to get prompt for that.

[Kira]

Memory. Okay. I'll dig it out tomorrow and reseat the chip (card). It's XP, I'll have to look into what it has. "memcheck", got it. I'll look it up. Thanks.

[Jabo]

Link is here.

Sorry, it's memtest not memcheck, this link will take you to the download page. My preferred way to use it is to download the .iso and burn it to a CD. Then boot the machine from the CD. Memtest will run automatically. Simples!

Jabo

[gec]

could be the video card that is not slotted right. try resetting it also.

memory checking utility is of none help if u have nothing on the screen.

[Kira]

I tried reseating the memory sticks, it didn't seem to do much. Tried the same with the video card, and that seemed to do the trick. Thanks for the hints!

Still, I decided it was time for the roughly yearly HD wipe and reinstall of the OS, Windows XP Home, particularly given all my untimely crashes and other issues while flying online lately (sorry guys! ). The reinstall went as expected, no problems with that. The internet, however, has decided to be stuborn. I had this problem last time I did this, finally figured it out, and made the mistake of thinking I'd remember it, as it was a rather simple issue, once I found it. Silly me. Anyway, here's the setup:

I have a second computer that is my direct cable/DSL linked machine. It has a network set up, so that my machine should be able to access the network, and thus the internet. Unfortunately, the host does not recognize my computer as being part of the network. Therefore, no luck. The hard connection is there, my computer recognizes the cable connection between my computer and the router/modem box as being present, and the hardlink as established, but there are no packets of information being sent over the line.

I've gone through the "How to set up a home network" guides out there, without luck. One of the goofy things, when looking at the connections on the host computer (which I'm on now), is that there is absolutely nothing displayed in any of the boxes under the "Connections" tab in Control Panel -> Internet Options, so I'm at a loss as to how, exactly, the thing is communicating with the provider.

I attempted the DOS prompt (START -> RUN - type "cmd") test of typing "Ping 127.0.0.1", and the results came back fine. 4 packets sent, 4 recieved, 0% loss. So I know the connection's good. And yet:

1394 Net adapter is working properly, but it has 0 sent and 0 recieved. It also appears grey, as in greyed out/not working, but when queried, it says it's fine. Huh?

I'm working on it. May get it yet, probably has to do with lack of specified IP address, which I'm working on now.

I'll keep you posted.

[B16Enk]

Working on the basis your host (or gateway machine) is running ICS (Internet Connection Sharing) and you have made no changes there:

On host do start > run > cmd

Type ipconfig /all

This will spew out the IP addresses associated with your system.

You should see 192.168.0.1 as its main IP.

On your gaming rig do the same, you should see an IP address of 192.168.0.x where x is between 2 and 254.

If it does not have a 192.x.x.x address, and instead has a 196 address then it has failed to pick up a DHCP address from your Gateway PC.

Do Start > Settings > Network Connections (right click and select 'Explore')

Find your adapter there, right click and do a properties on it.

Scroll down to the Internet Protocol entry, highlight and then click properties button.

Enter the following:

IP address 192.168.0.2

Subnet mask 255.255.255.0

Gateway 192.168.0.1

Apply and save and it should work.

Pinging 127.0.0.1 is only testing the local loopback device, which is virtual, and merely confirms TCP is working - not your network!

the 1394 adapter is a firewire adapter and is not normally used for networking..

[Kira]

Okay, apparently I missed setting up something. ipconfig /all returns "Windows IP Config" only. Absolutely nothing else. Just blankness, and a second C:/Users/Owner prompt.

I set up the Network Connections Adapter with the entries you mentioned. No change, though. Hmmmm....

[B16Enk]

That indicates you do not have the drivers for your NIC installed.

Look in Device Manager for a network card (NIC) and you will likely see an unknown device or a NIC without drivers

[Kira]

No drivers. Yes, I did suspect as much. Now to hunt them down.

[Kira]

I have, officially, gotten in over my head (again). First, just to get this out of the way, some background on my machine as it stood, prior to my attempted re-install of XP. I had a motherboard failure just at the tail end of the warranty. Having gotten the computer in another area of the country, I had it shipped back to the place I got it, and had the motherboard replaced. When it got back, the machine ran fine, so they had obviously gotten all the drivers installed correctly, etc. The question is how did they install all the drivers (where did they get them from), and why can't I seem to duplicate the reinstallation of all these drivers? I would have thought such drivers would be on the Windowns XP boot disk, as most of the devices are basic functions (sound, etc). Did they miss a CD with the drivers that they were supposed to send me with the new motherboard? I do have the new motherboard drivers CD, but it seems to be only the drivers for the motherboard, not for anything else. My guess is that being a business, they've gotten one of the auto-install sites and just used that? Anyway...

In the "Network" area of Device Manager, only the 1394 Network Adapter is displayed. No network card, which means I haven't installed it yet, right? By the way, there IS an Ethernet connection device that doesn't have any drivers. This is rather suspicious regarding lack of internet. Ethernet Controller, manufacturer unkown. How does one track down the required drivers if the manufacturer is unkown?

Not having much luck with my sound, either. I looked it up in an attempt to look up the required drivers. All it states for "System Manufacturer" is: "Standard System Devices". If it's a "standard device", should it not have a "standard driver" installed from the WinXP bootdisk? I'm a bit confused. The other information for sound is details on the "Audio Compression Codecs" under properties and under the Details tab, "Device Instance ID", and what is probably a file location.

I'm definitely not well versed in the operations of the innards of computers. Gotta start somewhere, I suppose.

[B16Enk]

What make and model is the mobo?

Often the drivers package on CD will include both sound and network drivers, for example nForce boards the sound and network drivers are part of the chipset driver package.

[Kira]

"Often the drivers package on CD will include both sound and network drivers". That's exactly what I was thinking, and why it's so incomprehensible to me that I'm having this much trouble with that of all things, but I think I know why.

The motherboard must be a "Gigabyte GA-MA770-UD3". Which, incidently, is not what they said they were installing at the time that I sent this away with a motherboard failure. I have a drivers CD for my old board, an ASUS M2NPV-VM. Needless to say, the Gigabyte board takes one look at the ASUS CD and says "Nope! "

They didn't send a drivers CD for the Gigabyte board, having told me they had to look long and hard for another ASUS M2NPV-VM, because it was so old, they had to special order it. Um. Right.

So. I have several CDs that I have tried, as follows:

Vista Drivers Upgrade Kit: Official Vista Drivers for ASUS Motherboards

XP Home CD

msi Afterburner Graphics card Performance Booster

msi Drivers and Utilities

ASUS software library

Nero 7 Essentials

M2NPV-VM Series Chipset Support CD

I do realise that some of these sound ridiculous, but I'm just covering all bases, and going with the seemingly obvious, that being that the drivers would be on a CD, so likely one of the CDs I keep in my "Base Files/Start Over From Scratch kit", in the old ASUS motherboard box. Unfortunately, not a one of them has "Gigabyte" written on it.

Okay, got to the GigaByte website, found the drivers, 7zipped. DLing and hopefully burning to CD to transfer to the other PC. Update to follow.

Once again, it seems, a matter of those who know what they're doing taking advantage of those who aren't quite so sure, aided by the safety afforded by distance. Grumble. Please forgive my grumblings, and seemingly out of the blue accusations. They also switched out my video card for a lesser card, so I have reason to be less than pleased with these folks (and now doubly so). That makes two untruths on their part, and I'm thinking that regardless of how long it takes me to get this thing back in working order, a wipedown was a good idea, considering who knows what else they may have done or not done as the case may be.

[gec]

i'm confused .

could you please just specify the brand and model of the MB that IS right now in your computer, so we can help you with drivers.

same thing goes for GPU if u believe it's not working.

[B16Enk]

Grab a copy of this:

CPU Z Download

Mainboard tab should tell you what we need to know.

[Kira]

Yeah, sorry, it is confusing. Thanks for the link, here's the mainboard information:

Manufacturer: Gigabyte Technology Co. Ltd

Model #: GA-MA770-UD3

Chipset: AMD 770

Southbridge: SB770

LPCIO: ITE IT8720

Incidently, when I attempted to open the drivers on the gaming rig, 7zip wanted to gain internet access to get itself started, so I'll have to figure out internet access on the gaming rig first, and DL the zipped drivers directly to that machine. Apparently, it's not just a matter of grabbing the drivers and burning them to disk on my internet capable machine, as they are 7zipped, and don't want to unzip into my transfer folder for burning to CD.

So, while I now think I have the basic sound drivers etc that I need for the gaming rig, it seems that getting the internet functioning on that one is still a prerequisite to getting those files on to the machine.

[gec]

Here are the drivers in the attachment.

The drivers are for Gigabyte GA-MA770-UD3 (Rev. 2.1) and WinXP 32bit

uninstall the audio driver you have installed, cause we do not know if they are good. install the Chipset driver first.

my advice: throw away the Asus Driver CD you have there.

Chipset.exe

HD_Audio.exe

Network.exe

[Kira]

Thanks gec, those drivers did the trick. It's slow, it's funky looking, but the interwebz is back. Horray! Ah, and if you're wondering about the length of time it took for me to respond, well, lets just say that when you strip the cable out of your cable connection to the modem, bad things happen! Anyway, alls well that ends well. Many thanks for the help, All.

[gec]

glad u've sorted it out m8