long beep after POST beeps? (and not ram related?)

[pulupulu]

I am having trouble helping someone to fix a computer. Right now I can't identify what is the beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep (1 long continuous non-stop beep) after POST mean. The PC can boot up to check ram, enter cmos etc, but as soon as it try to get past POST, this beep happen, leaving the screen with pure black with a blinking "_".

I was able to get the PC to boot up with a different hard drive. (replacing ONLY the hard drive)

I also took the hard drive out to run scandisk (windows), chkdsk (command prompt), seagate's seatool test (all test except advance test). No problem detected. (the PC with the problem can also identify the HD in CMOS)

I plan to go out later to buy some spare DDR3 (have none currently), to test if it really is the RAM; but, it doesn't make sense that I can boot up 100% fine with this same ram with a different hard drive.

It is a gateway sx2800-01
Gateway SX2800-01 Desktop Computer - 2.33 GHz - Slim Tower - product summary - Bing Shopping

To clarify what the beep sound like...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBb7Z7RzHTM

It sounds similar to that. Long continuous beep.

It will boot up with the normal beep like everything is ok, until booting hard drive. Also can't boot from usb storage and unable to get to the menu to choose what drive to boot.

 

[mfenn]

Well, if you swapped the HDD and it boots, that leads me to believe that there is a problem with the HDD. Since the HDD checks out in a different system, maybe you have a bad SATA cable/port?

 

[pulupulu]

Ok I will look into that. Thanks for the tip.

One thing I want to confirm, that long beep can also be hard drive related beep?

 

[pulupulu]

Ok, an update.

I switched to a brand new SATA cable, and the hard drive started beeping (not the PC beeping). Beep... beep... beep, the typical faulty hard drive beep. (I find it weird how the old SATA cable did not give me such clue)

So I guess this hard drive is done for. For some reason, I was able to plug it into one of those external USB hard drive seat and make it work; so no loss of important data.

Thanks for the tip.

 

[mfenn]

Glad to help!