Nonestop beep at start up

[WARP10]

Hello guys

My buddy is bringing his computer over to my place tomorrow, but I thought I'd start "early" in trying to diagnose and hopefully fix it!

What he tells me is, when he powers it up, the computer will just continue to beep nonestop. NOTHING appears on the monitor. Actually the only thing the monitor does is the power light ON THE MONITOR initially turns green, then yellow/amber

What can I do to diagnose this? and what do you gentlemen think it might be??

Thank you

Paul
warp10@rogers.com

 

[mechBgon]

What can you tell us about the system's specs? Is it an off-the-shelf Gateway/HP/Compaq/Dell/eMachines or is it "built?" Was it working before and then stopped working? Any electrical storms in the area leading up to this problem?

 

[Azratax]

It sounds like something is VERY wrong with either the memory, CPU, mobo, or video card.
Try reseating the memory and vidcard (and then the cpu, but save that for after reseating vidcard and ram dont work - its a pain to get to the cpu because of the heatsink). After that i would try swaping the ram out in favor of known good ram. I highly suspect the ram.
-Az

 

[johnjkr1]

Does it beep before, or after loading windows? If it is before, it is probably a hardware issue. If it is after, then he just might have a virus (there are a couple out there that do exactly that)

 

[nanaki333]

if it's an alternating beep, like a high beep then low beep and is continues, then it's probably the cpu overheating. either that, or he bought a cpu that his motherboard doesn't support. i got that alternating beep thing when i tried an xp2800 in a board that only supported a 266fsb. the manual of the board also says that non-stop beep is the cause of the cpu overheating or wrong cpu.

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: nanaki333
if it's an alternating beep, like a high beep then low beep and is continues, then it's probably the cpu overheating. either that, or he bought a cpu that his motherboard doesn't support. i got that alternating beep thing when i tried an xp2800 in a board that only supported a 266fsb. the manual of the board also says that non-stop beep is the cause of the cpu overheating or wrong cpu.

I'd check to ensure that the heatsink isn't on backwards and that he hasn't tried to re-use a melted phase-change thermal patch or forgotten to use any thermal compound whatsoever. This might help, although it sounds like you've been around the block already on this stuff: http://www.omnicast.net/~tmcfadden/guides/Heatsink/index.html

 

[mechBgon]

Also, since you apparently know the brand/model of motherboard, what is it?