Hey all. This isn't an overclocking question exactly, but it may be related. I've been trying to solve this problem for months and would really appreciate any help anyone could give me. This problem is driving me crazy. Here are the symptoms:
I'm getting this INTERMITTENT problem, where let's say once out of every 8 times I try to turn on my system, upon pushing the power button my video card fan starts blowing at full speed (which it usually doesn't do) and I get 2 short beeps followed by 8 longer beeps. I have an AMI BIOS on an MSI mobo. After the beeps, the computer just sits there. No post, no screen, fan blowing full. Then I turn it off, and wait some time, and try again. I've noticed that if I try to turn it on again immediately, the same thing will happen. If I give it 5 minutes or so, it will probably work. Now, here's the reason I'm posting here. When my computer finally DOES boot up successfully after all of this garbage, my BIOS is displaying the message "Warning, previous attempt at overclocking has failed" And it asks me the Y/N question of whether or not to load BIOS defaults. Now, I have never overclocked in my life. I run the chip at its default voltage, and I run my RAM a little slow to make that work out due to the multiplier. And I had been doing that for years. So I don't know why it's giving me the overclocking message, but it started me thinking maybe it's a voltage problem? Could also explain the fan running so fast.
The beep codes indicate both a bad first 64k of memory and a bad video card. I've already RMA'd the video card twice, so it's definitely not that. I've also tried running just one of my two sticks of RAM at a time, using all four of the mem slots, and there's no difference.
So I'm thinking it's either A) my mobo is dead, or B) the power supply is bad. The thing is, I've never seen an intermittent problem like this. In the past when I've seen a psu die, it just died, and sometimes took something with it. Also, assuming the system does start, it rarely crashes or freezes. It's pretty solid when it works. And when it doesn't work, it's just dead. It's been going on for about 6 months now. I mentioned I RAM'd the video card twice. The first time was to see if that was the problem. But then whatever this problem is eventually wrecked that card: While playing a game, the screen bugged out with artifacts all over. So I rebooted and I still had screen artifacting, 3 colors and it only ran in low res. And that was it from then on. So I RMA'd again, and am obviously just risking the same thing happening again.
Unfortunately I can't afford to replace both my PSU as well as my mobo (which would require a new chip & new ram due to its ancientness) so I'd really love to figure out which thing it is.
Does anyone have experience with something like this? I'm really going crazy here. If someone could help with this, I'd really appreciate it. Thanks in advance.
Here are the relevant specs:
MSI P35 Neo-F LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX Intel Motherboard version MS-7360
Intel Core 2 Duo E7200 Wolfdale 2.53GHz LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Processor
AMI Bios
3GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 PC2 6400 (2gb + 1gb)
Antec TRUEPOWERII TPII-550 550W ATX12V
nVidia 450 GTS Video card
EDIT: Sorry for the double post, the website was acting up.
I'm getting this INTERMITTENT problem, where let's say once out of every 8 times I try to turn on my system, upon pushing the power button my video card fan starts blowing at full speed (which it usually doesn't do) and I get 2 short beeps followed by 8 longer beeps. I have an AMI BIOS on an MSI mobo. After the beeps, the computer just sits there. No post, no screen, fan blowing full. Then I turn it off, and wait some time, and try again. I've noticed that if I try to turn it on again immediately, the same thing will happen. If I give it 5 minutes or so, it will probably work. Now, here's the reason I'm posting here. When my computer finally DOES boot up successfully after all of this garbage, my BIOS is displaying the message "Warning, previous attempt at overclocking has failed" And it asks me the Y/N question of whether or not to load BIOS defaults. Now, I have never overclocked in my life. I run the chip at its default voltage, and I run my RAM a little slow to make that work out due to the multiplier. And I had been doing that for years. So I don't know why it's giving me the overclocking message, but it started me thinking maybe it's a voltage problem? Could also explain the fan running so fast.
The beep codes indicate both a bad first 64k of memory and a bad video card. I've already RMA'd the video card twice, so it's definitely not that. I've also tried running just one of my two sticks of RAM at a time, using all four of the mem slots, and there's no difference.
So I'm thinking it's either A) my mobo is dead, or B) the power supply is bad. The thing is, I've never seen an intermittent problem like this. In the past when I've seen a psu die, it just died, and sometimes took something with it. Also, assuming the system does start, it rarely crashes or freezes. It's pretty solid when it works. And when it doesn't work, it's just dead. It's been going on for about 6 months now. I mentioned I RAM'd the video card twice. The first time was to see if that was the problem. But then whatever this problem is eventually wrecked that card: While playing a game, the screen bugged out with artifacts all over. So I rebooted and I still had screen artifacting, 3 colors and it only ran in low res. And that was it from then on. So I RMA'd again, and am obviously just risking the same thing happening again.
Unfortunately I can't afford to replace both my PSU as well as my mobo (which would require a new chip & new ram due to its ancientness) so I'd really love to figure out which thing it is.
Does anyone have experience with something like this? I'm really going crazy here. If someone could help with this, I'd really appreciate it. Thanks in advance.
Here are the relevant specs:
MSI P35 Neo-F LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX Intel Motherboard version MS-7360
Intel Core 2 Duo E7200 Wolfdale 2.53GHz LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Processor
AMI Bios
3GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 PC2 6400 (2gb + 1gb)
Antec TRUEPOWERII TPII-550 550W ATX12V
nVidia 450 GTS Video card
EDIT: Sorry for the double post, the website was acting up.
