Alarm

[~Yuckfou~]

I'm getting shutdowns followed by 1 second alarms at 1 second intervals.
Installed SP2 this afternoon so I'm guessing it's to do with that. What would that alarm normally indicate? ta.

 

[~Yuckfou~]

It's worse now :/
When I switched on this morning I just got the alarm, PC wouldn't boot at all. I had to switch the thing off an on about 10 times then it eventually booted. I'm beginning to think that the SP2 thing may just be a coincidence.

 

[Gurnox]

Sounds horrifically hardware based to me. Have you checked that everything is seated on the MB properly and that all of your fans e.t.c. are working?

 

[~Yuckfou~]

It's getting worse. Now getting random reboots. Sometimes it does reboot, sometimes it just hangs, powered up fans on etc but zero zctivity, ie blank screen.
I will check everything is seated etc. For the moment all fans are working and temps are fine though. Glad I finished HL2 a couple of days ago

 

[smurkin]

my guess, from the symptoms would be memory....if you have two sticks you could take one out, try it, then swap them around, see if that fixes it.

 

[Ch3tan]

Does your motherboard manual not give a list of warning beeps and what they mean?

 

[~Yuckfou~]

Does your motherboard manual not give a list of warning beeps and what they mean?

Nope, it's ABIT KG7, just in case that helps. When I just switched on now, it powered, alarmed and didn't boot. I'm going to check everything in a while, first to get an up to date backup of everything to another drive just in case. I'm running with the side off for now in case it is temps, but currently 44C, was 49C, I'll clean the dust off while it's open it was running in the 30's when first built

/edit
should mention it booted fine after I hit reset.

 

[leggy]

Really really sounds like a memory fault. This all sounds so familiar to a mate's pc I fixed recently.

 

[~Yuckfou~]

OK, its been apart swapped the 2 x 256 mem chips over. Fired up without alarms, which is a good thing. I've cleaned up all the fans, there are two tucked up the front I can't get to without removing the front of the case. You would not believe the amount of dust there was. It is now running at 39C albeit under next to no load. That's more then 10C cooler just for a 10 minute clean up.
However this thing was alarming from cold so I'm convinced it is not temp related. I'm keeping my fingers crossed atm. Hopefully I just needed to give those mem chips a fiddle.

 

[~Yuckfou~]

nope....

It just rebooted after 20 minutes or so, was playing CSS at the time :/ No alarms just rebooted.

 

[smurkin]

I have that mobo...its a good board, just old. Did you try with just one mem stick ? thats the ticket, just swapping them around just moves the problem around...identify the problem stick.

You might be thinking psu. Perhaps a coincidence, but my psu (probably 3 years old - same age as the mobo), failed six months back - I dont think a faulty psu will cause the beeps - but it CAN cause spontaneous rebooting & bad psus are the most common cause of fried ram (due to voltage spikes).

 

[Mazling]

I too would suggest taking a look at your psu connections (indeed any/all inside your comp) and maybe trying a spare - I had similar problems with these.

 

[caLLous]

Mine was randomly rebooting when the fan on the GPU on my Geforce died. Not sure about the 'from cold' bit though.

 

[Tom]

Check nothing has fallen between the back of the motherboard and the case, shorting it out occasionally.

Also check the voltage of your CMOS battery.

 

[~Yuckfou~]

I've tried each mem stick individually. With one it refuses to boot, just alarms. With the other it boots and then reboots once in windows. So I've put them back how they were and now the bugger won't boot it just alarms, *pulls hair out of head*.

Now I was going to rebuild this with some of those newfangled bits, 6800 ultra, athlon64 3200 + MoBo and spanky new ram. This project was planned for the crimbo break and gave Mrs Yuck, Mummy & Daddy Yuck some useful pressies to buy. So I really don't want to buy all that stuff. My plan is now to buy a new PSU that would also serve the new setup. If that doesn't work then wait until crimbo. Got quite a lot of fans in the case, any suggestions on PSU? Overclockers have a few on "this week only" offer.

 

[~Yuckfou~]

Check nothing has fallen between the back of the motherboard and the case, shorting it out occasionally.

Also check the voltage of your CMOS battery.

You posted while I was typing.
How do I check the CMOS Battery?

 

[Tom]

Just pull it out and test it with a voltmeter. Or buy a new one from Halfords/Maplin etc. If its not a flat one like a watch battery, you might have to get the soldering iron out.

If you're after a PSU, it has to be a Zalman. They are so fucking quiet you won't believe it - you literally can't hear the fuckers.

 

[~Yuckfou~]

Just pull it out and test it with a voltmeter. Or buy a new one from Halfords/Maplin etc.

If you're after a PSU, it has to be a Zalman. They are so fucking quiet you won't believe it - you literally can't hear the fuckers.

I just been checking those out, and the spinky Zalman cpu coolers with 120mm fans, teh yum, lovely and quiet.

 

[Gurnox]

I just been checking those out, and the spinky Zalman cpu coolers with 120mm fans, teh yum, lovely and quiet.

Custom PC reckon the Tagan TG480-U01 is a pretty good buy. Don't know how reliable a source this is though.

 

[anattic]

KG7 Beep Codes

Found a list of the Abit KG7 beep codes. Sounds like the DRAM to me.

 

[~Yuckfou~]

Have a cigar!
So [dunce] dram? [/dunce] is that my ram sticks or something else?

 

[fatbusinessman]

Yup, that's yer RAM sticks. If you've got any you can scrounge out of another computer, give them a shot and see if that works out any better. Failing that, try taking one of them out and just using the other for a while. If it still crashes, take that one out and put the other one in instead. Should hopefully point out to you which one is buggered. Then go out and buy a replacement (preferably from somewhere reputable like crucial.com).

 

[~Yuckfou~]

I have swapped them out, but neither seems to be reliable. It's doing my head in now, if the problem was consistent it would be easier. The thing hasn't alarmed all day, but does reboot randomly, sometimes as soon as windows launches, sometimes after 30 mins or so.
I'm on my lappy now, but I've had the thing switched on all day out of idle curiousity. It just errored:
DPPS2.exe
The instruction at "0x77d48ace" referenced memory at "0x77d48ace". The memory could not be written.
Click OK to terminate the program.

The app is pop up stopper, but looks like the memory is borked. I've ordered a new Zalman PSU, but I was going to u/g anyway so the timing isn't too bad. I might just pick up some cheapo DDR PC2100 on EBay for the next few weeks then sell it again when I'm done with it.

 

[~Yuckfou~]

I've spotted some cheap DDR PC2100 256meg chips on EBay. I'm assuming that one of those would work with one of my existing sticks?
I've somehow got it working on one stick but it's dog slow as you would expect. £20 will solve the problem in the short term. Ta.

 

[smurkin]

With my KG7, I found only banks 1 and 2 were reliable...to complicate matters

 

[~Yuckfou~]

It's working with one of the ram sticks. I swapped them several times and it didn't work, tried one last time and hey presto. I'm starting to think that maybe there is a dodgy connection somewhere on the board. Anyway now that it's running (slowly on 256mb) I'm leaving it until I upgrade over crimbo. No CSS for a few weeks but at least I finished HL2 before the fault occured.

 

[Guest]

its prolly the sloty where the memory goes, upgrade to a 512 chip on one slot (the one that works)

 

[~Yuckfou~]

Well I've had a result tbh. One of the guys at work has just upgraded and has some memory sticks that will do nicely. So that will tell me whether the slot itself is buggered. I can borrow these old sticks off him over the next few weeks, if I can get back on to CSS I'll be a happy bunny!