Award BIOS Error Beeps

[Ultralight]

My second rig is an old P3 1.2 GHz Tualatain cpu on and ASUS TUSL2-C motherboard (815E chipset;Award BIOS) running XP Pro with 512 megs of RAM at 133MHz. This thing has been rock solid for years and it is perfect for my son who just surfs, emails, and does school work. It has been perfect for what we need it to do and it keeps him away from my newer rig. :thumbsup:

But recently I have been getting error beeps. My son informed me that one time it was making these beeps so he walked away and when he came back they were gone.

Just yesterday the system froze and so I had to reboot. The problem is now all it does is beep without booting; I can't even get into the BIOS. Nothing comes on the monitor. I thought it was due to the master CD-ROM that gave up the ghost.

Bottom line: I removed said drive, removed power from other drives to see if it would boot; all fans are working including cpu and power -- but I still get beeps and nothing on the screen.

The beeps are short as high-low, high-low repeating over and over with an additional long beep that also repeats.

Now according to Award BIOS 1 long and 2 short beeps repeating means problems with the video controller or video card.

However Award BIOS also says that the short beeps repeating high-low, high -low and accordingly this means either a) a heat probelm (there isn't any) or a damaged CPU.

Can it be that I might have two issues.

The problem with Award BIOS, from what I read, is that they pretty much contract their BIOS out to many parties and thus each manufacture can twaek as they see fit. I can't find anything as to how ASUS coded for this board.

Any help, insight, and/or advice would be appreciated. Thanks.

 

[Iron Woode]

unplug the pc. clear the cmos. plug it back in. turn it on and see if it beeps again.

if so, try another video card.

at this point its just a matter of finding the failed device.

 

[Ultralight]

I have unplugged the PC, cleared the CMOS but I still can't boot up to where I can even get to the BIOS. The screen remains black but I know it is not the monitor or the monitor cable.

This board is designed for 2x/4x video card and I thought about getting a new video card I don't have access to an old one) but basically I can only find 4x/8x or 8x and I am hesitant in spending money on a new AGP card that might not woerk in a 2x/4x slot and also that my video card might not be the issue. This system is 6+ years old. Still, it may be my only recourse.

I checked the caps and motherboard thrice over and every one of them are clean, no bulges whatsoever, and no leakage.

I do remember that a week ago I received a BSOD of 0x35 NO_MORE_IRP_STACK_LOCATIONS and I had to shut down the system. Now I read minidumps over at TechSpot and I have come across many errors but this was a new one for me. This is what MS says:

Bug Check 0x35: NO_MORE_IRP_STACK_LOCATIONS
The NO_MORE_IRP_STACK_LOCATIONS bug check has a value of 0x00000035. This bug check occurs when the IoCallDriver packet has no more stack locations remaining.

Parameters
The following parameters are displayed on the blue screen.

Parameter Description
1 Address of the IRP
2 Reserved
3 Reserved
4 Reserved


Cause
A higher-level driver has attempted to call a lower-level driver through the IoCallDriver interface, but there are no more stack locations in the packet. This will prevent the lower-level driver from accessing its parameters.

This is a disastrous situation, since the higher level driver is proceeding as if it has filled in the parameters for the lower level driver (as required). But since there is no stack location for the latter driver, the former has actually written off the end of the packet. This means that some other memory has been corrupted as well.


Does anyone understand what they are stating? Why is it "a disastrous situation?" I have read many MS descriptions of BSODs but never with such descriptive force.

And what does it mean when they say, "...some other memory has been corrupted as well"?

Could such an error point to the cause of my problem(s)? Could whatever caused the 0x35 also be responsible for corrupting the memory on my video card?

Thanks for the help so far.

 

[Iron Woode]

newer AGP cards 8X are backward compatible in 2x/4x slots. However the reverse is not often true. Older cards are designed for a higher voltage slot and can kill a newer AGP slot.

You have several options:

1. borrow someone's AGP card

2. buy a cheap AGP card

3. find an old PCI video card

3 will work fine but 1 or 2 is better for diagnostic tests.

right now since windows isn't booting up, that error is the least of your worries.

you could take the pc to a repair place, but that will cost some coin.

if a replacement video card doesn't make a difference, you may be looking at a more serious failure.

EDIT: how is the PSU? maybe it is dying.

 

[Ultralight]

Okay guys, here is my continuing saga which I will try to keep shorter than War and Peace:

1. Borrowed three AGP cards from a buddy of mine because there was a very good chance my video card and even possibly my AGP slot was fried. The first one gave me the error codes when I powered on but the second actually allowed me to boot to the BIOS without the errors.

2. But when I get to the BIOS there are many settings that I couldn't change. I never ran into this before and one of them was the CPU frequency which was auto set by the board at 1.44 MHz. One problem: My cpu is a 1.2 MHz. The board overclocked and I had nothing to do with it. I couldn't access the v.core either.

3. This is a jumperless board. I have always had it set in the jumperless mode -- always. But what I failed to realize was that after I cleared the old CMOS and then decided to go with a new CMOS I accidently put the tab where it disabled the jumper free setting. Only when it is in the jumperless position can one set the BIOS manually; otherwise the board does alot of things for you and you can't change them.

4. So thinking that possibly my video card isn't shot I put my card back in and when I rebooted sure enough I could get into the BIOS. However, this could only happen when the jumper free was disabled. If I put it back to jumper free, again where I have had it for 6+ years, the same error beeps would occur and no video whatsoever. Grrr!

5. So I decided to go with the jumperless disabled, set BIOS settings that I could, and see if I could get into Windows. Nothing doing.

6. It gets to the first screen, HD and CD Drive load and are recognized but the Floppy fails in which I am automatically back to the BIOS.

7. I disabled the floppy in the BIOS. No go because I still get the failure message. I physically disconnect the floppy's power source and cable. Still no go.

8. I have tried every configurration you can think of. I read on the BIOS forwards and backwards. I could even flash the very last updated BIOS ASUS has for this board, if I only could get into Windows and more importantly I need my floppy drive for this.

9. So I reconnected my floppy and when I did no power whatsoever. The mobo led light is on but right now the system seems dead. I disconnected the floppy wondering if that might have been the cause but still no power.

I wish there was some way to know for certain if the mobo is dead. Something majorily isn't right. I really hate to have to spend money on another rig because we don't have it right now, but my family is in need of a second rig.

Any other thoughts or suggestions or am I looking at a dead motherboard and I need to bury it while playing taps? Thanks.