no video on boot

[DragonReborn]

Hey all, I have an old nforce computer in my office (don't worry, it's not my main PC) and I was working on it yesterday and suddenly the monitor flashed and the computer turned off. I basically think it was a big surge.

Anyway, when I boot everything tunrs on and looks good but I get a short single post beep (dram refresh error) and no video. I've tried resetting the ram, only using one module at a time, different banks, etc. Nada, nothing works.

Bad mobo/chipset?

What's a good, cheap setup now? I was thinking an older nforce2/3 with built in video and a sempron. Or would a Celeron be a better setup? Want to stay around $250 for mobo and processor.

 

[DragonReborn]

any ideas?

 

[corruptedmage25]

if you live in an area near a frys, you could check wit them. they have cheap mobo/cpu combos

 

[LiLithTecH]

System RAM Refresh failure means the programmable interrupt timer on the motherboard has failed.

YES. It is Time to replace.

Modern Celeron's and the AMD Sempron are good alternatives if you do
not plan on using it for hard gaming.

 

[DragonReborn]

ok, so I am just having no luck lately. =(

Bought a new nforce 4 mobo, athlon 64 3000+, new PSU, new ram and a pci express vdieo card (evga 6200). Turn it on and everything turns on, looks good but I get NO POST sound. NOTHING.. Long story short, after numerous tests (ram, hard drive, etc) i took out the video card and BAM gave me a post sound (1 long, 2 short) which means that there is a dsplay error. Duh. Am I doing anything wrong? Shouldn't my nforce4 mobo be ready for a pci express card?

Sigh...help please =\

 

[DragonReborn]

ok, to add insult to injury I am having more problems:

bought a pci video card and all is well but then I updated the bios and now I cannot boot into windows. I can boot into safe mode. it just keeps resetting. I cannot even use the winxp cd to reformat/reinstall. It goes through the whole loading phase but then resets RIGHT after it loads all the drives.

This sucks. =\ Please help