Would not boot, now just beeps.

[ifloater]

I have a Cyrix 200MHz on a TXpro II mother board. I put the computer together myself last year. It was running great until about 3 months ago. It would start to crash and I would get a blue screen with an error. Don't ask which error, I didn't write it down. About 3 weeks ago it would not boot up anymore. It would start to boot and then just freeze. The keybouard would not work then. I could get past it if I booted it with a boot disk but would not load into windows. After many days of trying to get it to boot into windows I thought that it might have been infected with the CIH virus. I couldn't get it to boot to scan it. Two days ago I downloaded a flash bios program to try to reset things. That was the last thing I did. Now it just turns on and just beeps a single tone every second or 2. If I try to boot with a disk then it beeps twice continuously. I have an older P75 that I can use but all the good stuff is on that one. Any help will be appreciated. Thanks.

[jokostel]

check and see if your memory is fully seated and that your cpu fan is running or not.....
have you made any changes to the system??...(memory timing,etc....)

[ifloater]

The only thing I changed was some switches in the flash eprom program that I downloaded. I'm not sure but I think I told it to call bios function from rom and I disabled bios file tag check. I possibly could have disabled NVRAM programing. The fan is working and the chips are seated. It was after I made these changes that it does what it doing. The program I downloaded was for AMI and it is AMI813.exe.

[OuTpaTienT]

Hopefully you still got the motherboard documentation around somewhere. Because those beeps have meaning. The pattern of beeps it gives will tell you exactly (or at least approximately) the problem that the motherboard is having when it trys to boot. Many m/b have dozens of different beep patterns indicating all types of problems, some which might be fixable and some not.

[ifloater]

It just beeps once every second. If I put a floppy in the drive then it beeps twice every second. It never stops either. It never gets to the bios identification screen or anything. The screen is blank.

[philipg]

Well for those kinda beeps, I would consider the memory either not in properly or garbage. Do you any other memory boards that you could put in there. Your memory may have died. I would try moving the memory around and if that didn't work have them tested in someone else's board or have the store test them.

Good luck.

[bkehoe]

Hi,
If you have an ISA graphics card (origional, not EISA) pop it in and youshould see what the computer is trying to tell you.

If you don't have them, you should be able to pick one up for under $10. On my holiday in Florida, I got a 1MB Trident chipped GC for $5.99 + tax.

If all fails try different memory, CPU, and at alast resort bring your BIOS chip to a computer dealer who has an eprom flasher, whjo can put the latest BIOS on the chip for a small cost.


Brendan

[ifloater]

The manual is on CD and I needed Acrobat to read it. Of course they didn't put Acrobat on the CD so I had to DL it. There was no mention to beeps or even any kind of trouble shooting it. I removed the battery thinking that might reset everything but after 2 days that didn't work either.

[This message has been edited by ifloater (edited 07-09-99).]

[philipg]

Here's a choice for you:

1.) Go out and buy or read in the bookstore the book "Upgrading and repairing PC's" and copy the appendix down of the beeps codes for your bios.

or

2.) Post them and I'll look them up in my book and tell you what they mean.

[ifloater]

The chips are good, I've taken them out and put them in another computer and back again. As for taking the bios chip out I could try that or buy a new one.

[Tex_Gex]

Here are some AMI bios codes and some thins to try..

http://schooltechnologies.com/Computer%20Hardware/Trouble%20Shooting/beep_code_amibios.htm

Hope it helps

[ifloater]

I tried the site but no help. It is just one beep continuously. I am going to see if I have someone around here to take the bios chip to to see if it is good or not.