My Old HP Brio (Model: BA410) Problem!!

[Sam25]

My old HP-Brio (BA410) was lying packed for quite a while now, since I have moved onto my newer PC. I decided to fire it up since I want to give the PC to someone who will use it. I connected all the wires properly, put the power ON, started the PC and the PC-start button glows bright green (normal). But, there is absolutely no signal from the PC to the monitor, although there is power supply to the CPU. After a few minutes the PC just gives a long monotonous humming sound followed by 3 beeps! That's it. I have tried for sometime now, but each time I switch the PC on it's the same long noise and then 3 beeps.

I don't have a clue what's wrong, can someone please help me out please!!! Thanks!

 

[Xsorovan]

http://bizsupport.austin.hp.co.../lpv06943/lpv06943.pdf

Page 35 (or page 41 in the PDF viewer) says that 3 beeps from the Brio is a "memory failure detection".

Sounds like bad ram or something... maybe "chip creep" or something. Might want to pull the RAM and re-seat it.

 

[Sam25]

Thanks for the help mate! I took out the RAM and then put it back again but the same thing continues. When I last ran the PC, quite sometime ago that is, I was using a Geforce 2 MX card on it. I no longer have that card but I have another AGP (ATI Radeon 9800 PRO - 128MB) card that I inserted onto the MoBo's AGP slot but no luck then too. When I switch on the PC the green lights to the keyboard just blinks for a second or two and then dies. No response from Keyboard at all after that, nothing on the monitor as well. The CPU's fan and graphic cards fan are working. Should I change the RAM and Mobo or is the HDD giving problems?

Btw, what is a "chip creep"??

 

[GaryJohnson]

Chip creep is where thermal expansion causes chips to slowly 'creep' out of their sockets.

Try the RAM in the other socket? If there are two sticks, try just one in each socket with the other socket empty.

The way to eliminate the RAM as the culprit is to establish that the PC won't POST with known good RAM, or that another PC will POST with the RAM your PC isn't POSTing with.

If the RAM is ok, then it's probably the motherboard.

A PC should be able to POST with a bad HDD or no HDD (it would boot displaying an error). So you could try disconnecting it if you suspect it as causing the problem.

 

[Xsorovan]

Thanks Gary for the technical definition of "chip creep". If the beep codes suggest that the RAM is bad then I would suggest seeing if you can try a stick of different RAM entirely to see what happens. Another way would be to pull out the RAM entirely and see if it gives you the same beep codes or if the beep code changes. And try some of Gary's suggestions.

 

[Sam25]

Thanks for all the help so far! I tried with each RAM differently but each time the same beeping continued. The RAMS were:

64 MB (Came with the HP PC) + 128 MB (Added-on later by me).

I tried with each stick seperately but no luck. Should I get a new stick of RAM and try again or is it now that the MoBo is the culprit? The number of beeps is the same and there is no signal to the monitor at all.