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No video on startup - Windows XP

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by riannon

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I have a dilema.

I have a computer that will not give me video when I turn it on. I am going to say right now that I am not by any stretch of the imagination an expert when it comes to building a computer. I had the thing working just fine, but I was upgrading it for my mother and she wanted more memory and an ethernet card so she could get on the internet. Well, I checked to make sure that the memory she gave me was the right type (very old, mind you, PC100 of all things) and did some research on how to install that card. I got everything put in, and now when I try to start the computer it plays several beeps (the only thing I can compare it to is if you are holding down a button and it plays that little "stop pressing my buttons!" sound) and nothing comes up on the screen. She has her monitor set to save power, so it goes inactive after a while, and when I start the computer it doesn't even come out of that state; the computer is not sending anything to monitor at all. I have tested the monitor and even taken the old monstrosity over to my computer to make doubly sure, but the problem is in the CPU somewhere.

My first thought is that maybe I had damaged the video card somehow. Trouble is, I am not sure how to go about testing that. I have a couple of old systems here that I could pull one out of, but I have never installed a video card before, and I am not sure if it would even work. Compatibility and all. I am open to suggestions as I don't know what to do with this thing. I don't have another working unit to put that questionable video card in (a friend suggested that) that I am willing to subject to possible failure.

Any suggestions would be appreciated. My apologies if this seems like a dumb question, but I truly am not well versed in this type of thing. I love tinkering, though, and if I can fix this myself I really want to. Thanks in advance.

4 replies

by kenone

Tell us the beep codes, you know, short,short long or whatever they are.
Second
Take the NIC and the new memory out.
reboot
Does it work now?
Install the memory
do you get beep codes on start up?
Did you go in and reset the bios to tell it about the new memory?
After you get it working with the new mem then, install the NIC and start again.

by wanttocancel

...You'll need to figure out which type of motherboard your computer has and match up those beep code with the ones the computer's emits. Try this website: http://www.computerhope.com/beep.htm

I think you might been using bad memory in my opinion. When I built my current computer, I bought a bad stick of RAM and had to exchange for another. It did the same thing your computer's doing per your description.

by oh smeg

Well it is trying to tell you what is wrong here. Those Beeps are an Error Code produced by the CMOS or BIOS if you like. If you know the Maker of the BIOS you can look up what the error code actually means.

But to do basic Fault Finding you start off by removing the stuff that was fitted and see if it works now. If it does then refit 1 bit at a time till it stops working and then you have the faulty bit.

In the case of RAM it may be just that the RAM is incompatible with what is already in place so it stops the unit from working. It by itself may be perfectly OK but is just incompatible with the existing RAM or the M'Board.

With Ethernet Cards sometimes the PCI Slot that you plug these into has an issue and you need to move things around to different PCI Slots. I have seen this previously where the IRQ Addressing on one PCI Slot is incompatible with the Card that is plugged into it and you need to move the card to a different PCI Slot. If all of the PCI Slots are Populated you may need to move several Cards around to make them all work.

Col

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