"Dead" System - Please Help

trying to figure out what is bad

[old_expat]

New computer with pretty standard bells and whistles, Thai version of XP.

A week ago I started getting triple "beeps" like a component/board failure or (?), and a black screen.

After a few tries it would start and seemed to run okay. This went on for several days.

Two days ago, I hit the start button and got a bezel light very briefly, then nothing. Dead silence. Pressing 'start' .. nothing .. unless I unplug the power for a few seconds. Then I get the same symptom = fans just start to turn (not even 1 rev), then dies again.

I tried unseating and replugging VGA and RAM. No good. I started to try a spare power supply but the main board has one of those 24 pin power sockets .. where the 20 pin plug and 4 pin plug nest together.

Someone suggested that it might be the main board battery.

Monitor is okay .. (backup machine.)

It's a long way to the nearest "good" 'puter shop? But if I know for sure what the problem is, I can get a friend to buy the part(s) in BKK and EMS them to me. (Computer is too large to EMS.)

What does this sound like to you?

TIA

[dcheney]

Try to find the documentation for your BIOS (probably with the docs for hte motherboard). It should tell you what the beep code means.

[bill]

dcheney has made a good suggestion about the BIOS beep codes.

It really sounds like a failed power supply to me, but it's hard to say with any certainty. If you have any components from a good machine that you could swap out that would be the best initial troubleshooting you could do in your situation.

I don't think the system board battery would be the cause in this case. That's normally just for keeping the computer's time and BIOS settings.

[kaled]

Try [acronymsonline.com...]

Also Google diagnose beeps.

For three beeps, could be bad memory. You could try unplugging the ram and booting without it. However, I agree that the power supply is the most likely problem.

Kaled.

[old_expat]

It used to 'beep', now it just sits there and blinks ONCE.

I broke down and drove it in to the nearest local shop today.

It isn't the:

power supply
RAM
CPU
VGA

I'm thinking it may be a sensor on the main board / cpu that shuts down the system when the CPU overheats and it's giving an "overheat" signal on startup.

I went through the mainboard manual and could not find any beep codes .. so it's back to BKK via a relay meeting in Hua Hin .. *sigh*

[Frank_Rizzo]

Could be bad sitting of the heatsink on the cpu.

If you went into the bios you should have been able to read the current cpu temp and any alarm thresholds.

That would not really be a beep type alarm but more likely a siren alarm. Beep codes are mostly for memory faults, gfx card etc.

[kaled]

Unplug all drives (power cords and ribbon cables) and try again. I've been racking my brain trying to remember what the cause was when I encountered a problem like this - it was a dead hard disk (about ten years ago).

Kaled.

[old_expat]

Just a couple of days ago I needed some data and remembered having a USB box. I took it apart and plugged it onto the new computer's hard drive and got my data.

Did something similar to open the DVDRW and recovered a CD that was stuck inside.

It's about 90%(?) that it's a failed main board. I happened to get one .. ASUS P5PL2/C .. that is said to be "not so good" .. around the forums.