Won't start - update now booting

[Craig234]

Probably nothing anyone can do here.

I decided to try uprading RAM. Powered down, took out the 2x2gb ram, and after about 15 minutes of finally gettting the new ram in the slots, 2x4gb, powered up. THree long beeps and nothing.

I decided I had done something wrong and I'd just like to see it work again so I put back the original ram.

15 minute later it was seated - same slots, couldn't see any difference. Once it got three long beeps and nothing, the rest of the times it just spins up the system, no beeps and no signal to the monitor.

So, it's broken. Typing this on my PS3 browser. I can't believe I have to go to the shop for a ram upgrade.

Seems like nothing to try to fix it - pretty straightforward.

 

[Blain]

Did you match speed, CAS and voltage rating?

Google "bios beep codes"

 

[ch33zw1z]

Clear CMOS in between swaps.

 

[Craig234]

No, I didn't match anything to anything, and I don't know how to clear cmos. Note I'm just talking about trying to get it booting with the same ram it had before, and there is no video signal.

I'm guessing clear cmos means take the battery off the motherboard for 30 seconds, but this is the same ram that waa fine, and bad cmos settings should stilll get a cmos screen.

 

[ch33zw1z]

Computers can be finicky, and sometimes require a little fiddling. Clear CMOS = pull out the battery, and move the Clear CMOS jumper to the two pins for "clearing cmos".

The jumper is typically a set of three pins with a two-pin jumer on pins 1+2, move to pins 2+3 for 60 seconds. Move back to 1+2, put battery back in, and try again.

If this doesn't work, pull the RAM and the VGA out and see if hte POST errors change. This will help try to determine what exactly is faulting during POST.

What model computer you have would help, if it's prebuild provide service tags. if it's home built, provide motherboard model.

 

[Charles Kozierok]

My guess is you dislodged a cable or something. I do this seemingly every other time I open my box, and it's always something totally unrelated to whatever I was working on.

Give everything a really thorough check and maybe reseat cards and cables to see if that helps.

 

[Craig234]

Well update, after the last post I went and pushed the ram around just a little and now it boots cmos.

Thing is now it says 'cmos checksum bad' which it didn't used to.

Again this is with the same old ram no changes. The settings all look correct.

So again not sure what to do. I could 'reset to defaults' but don't see how it'll help when they look correct and don't want to lose the settings. There is a 'save current settings' but would it really work?

When I 'exit without save' it just hangs, no Windows boot or disk access.

Further update: I did a 'save and exit' in CMOS without any changes, and now it's booting ok.

Who knows if it's stable - I'm not excited to try the RAM upgrade again soon.

 

[Blain]

Memory upgrades aren't bad as long as old and new DIMMs are speed, CAS and voltage matched.
Some older MB's may require smaller capacity DIMMs than are selling today.
Some MB's have stipulations about single or double sided DIMMs being installed in specific slots.
Your MB manual should tell you everything you need to know about compatibility.

 

[knev]

How about upgrading the BIOS Version?
Do you have the latest version on it ?