dead motherboard??

[AvatarD]

I have a chaintech apogee 7vjl mobo with an AMD athlon xp 2100+. (full setup is listed under My Rigs) Basically, it's 3 years old; no major problems. Recently I found it with the black screen saying something along the lines of "Windows did not shut down...this may be due to a hardware change..." blah blah. Wasn't responding, so I shut it down and restart. But, instead of restarting, the fans fire up, and just as the startup should be coming on the screen, the monitor is blank and I'm just getting beeps from the case speaker. No BIOS, no nothing. Long beep, pause, long beep, pause, long beep....and on and on and on. Not good; strip it out to just the board and memory. Same thing. Reset cmos, try again, same thing. Now, maybe the video card is bad, but for some reason I'm feeling that's not it. I've heard cases where after 3 years or so, AMD boards start to get little heat cracks around the chipset. I have a huge aftermarket fan/hs on, so I really don't htink that's it. Any ideas?? please

 

[Kaspian]

Have you changed your video card or moved your case around? I had a similar situation a few years back (when the Gforce 2mx came out). I was using a really cheap comp usa case and it was so flimsy that if I would move it (eg. from the floor to the top of my desk) I would start getting simmilar errors/beeps like the ones you're having. I would have to open the case up and reseting the video card would do the trick.

 

[AvatarD]

yea, moved the video card to another system and it worked fine; went back and it was still beeping. i move my case around a lot actually, but prior to getting the "windows didn't shut down properly screen" it was just sitting on the floor, where it had been for a while, and when i last left it it had just been on, running fine.

 

[ajfletcher]

Try taking your your ram out. If you have more than one stick, take one out and see if that does the trick. I am thinking that it is a ram prob.

 

[AvatarD]

tried it, no luck. think it has to be motherboard

 

[wpshooter]

Have you tried reseating or replacing the CMOS battery ?

 

[AvatarD]

yea, got it working again after replacing the ram and resetting the cmos. now xp is all screwed up though. nothing new there i guess though...