Please help - machine fails to boot

[JavaTenor]

I had a power surge - not sure how it happened, maybe I kicked the UPS? Anyway, the machine quickly lost and regained power several times over the course of a few seconds, and when it finally came on for good, it fails to boot at all, and begins to beep. This is the first system I've built, and it's been fine for over a year now, but I'm not sure how to troubleshoot this. The beeping is a repeated, long, single beep pattern. How can I troubleshoot this to figure out what's been fried/broken? It could be anything, and I don't have any spare parts sitting around at the moment. I've got a Shuttle AK31 motherboard, Athlon XP 1600+, 256 MB Crucial PC2100, Geforce 3 Ti 200. What should I check on first?

Thanks for any help you can offer!

 

[skyking]

A long single beep patttern is a memory problem, If I recall correctly.

 

[JavaTenor]

Is there any easy way to test that without access to another stick of RAM? If not, I guess I can head to some repair shop tomorrow and ask to try a known-good stick.

 

[skyking]

If you don't have access to another computer, you can try disconnecting everything but video, power, ram, cpu, keyboard.
See if it boots.
If you get the same long beep action, it is one of those components, the motherboard, or the bios itself.
Edit: What are you using to access the internet now? can you use it to test any of the components?

 

[DanTMWTMP]

take out the RAM chips, take out the Video card......and all the pci devices....pull the plug to the computer...put everything back in...put the ram stick(s) in a different slot.....
try again...

works for me all the time whenever i have this happen (happened to me on 3 other occasions..)

good lucks

 

[JavaTenor]

Thanks for the help, everyone. It turned out to be the video card - I found an old PCI SIS card lying around, stuck that in, and it fixed the problem. Sort of.

Now it boots, gets to the "Loading Windows XP" screen, and then stops displaying anything. It seems to respond to keyboard commands (the hard drive spins, at least), but nothing shows up on the monitor. Could it be trying to use the old (broken) video card, which is still in the AGP slot? I'll try removing it when I get home tonight, and see if that helps.

I was hoping to wait to upgrade until GeforceFX came out and bumped prices down, but oh well. New Ti 4200 on the way.