System won't boot or post, just beeps

[Gila-Man]

We had a brief power outage at our place recently (just blinked for a second and then came back on). Afterwards, however, my PC wouldn't boot or post. When I power it on, it just beeps loudly. I cleared CMOS to see if I could at least get into BIOS, but no luck. I'm sure where to begin looking. I checked the MB, CPU and other components for any kind of burn marks that might indicate that something got fried but didn't find anything. I'm wondering if perhaps the power supply just needs to be replaced. One odd thing I notice is that when I hit the power button, the system doesn't automatically start powering up. I press and hold and nothing happens. It's only after I press the power button three or four times that it attempts to power up and then gives me the long beeps.

Any suggestions where I should start?

[Olly1234]

Whats your MB and how many beeps in a row does it make before pausing?

[Gila-Man]

I guess it would've been smart to include that info, but I was rushing.

It's a Shuttle AN35N Ultra MB with an AMD Athlon XP 1600+ CPU.
I've got two sticks of 512MB RAM running in DDR mode.

It gives me three long beeps when I'm able to power it on. The manual, unfortunately, lacks a troubleshooting section and says nothing about diagnosing problems like this.

Perhaps my CPU has finally bought it.

[noTHINGface]

I really dont want to be the harbinger of doom - could it be that the board is fried? Do you have a surge protector on the power?

[Olly1234]

Thats an Nforce2 ultra 400 board inside I belive with an Award Bios..Usually the only beep you get from an Award indicates that a video error has occurred and the BIOS cannot initialize the video screen to display any additional information. This beep code consists of a single long beep followed by two short beeps..However beings your having to press your button several times makes me think your PSU may be fauly, have you got a spare or another PSU you could plug in to test?

[Gila-Man]

Yeah, I do have another PS I can try. I guess that would be the least of many evils. We have lots of problems with power outages, and our house was actually hit by lightning last year, so I've got 2 surge protectors between my PC and the outlet, one of them brand spanking new. As far as I'm concerned, having to replace a video card, a CPU, a stick or two of memory or all of the above is far preferable to losing any data off the HDs.

Thanks for the suggestions. I'll be back with news once I've done some process of elimination ...

[Donny John]

Obviously you've tried holding down insert while resetting?

[iranu]

Bios Beep Codes

[Gila-Man]

Well, I'm thinking now I've got a problem with the power supply or something along those lines. I pulled everything out but the bare minimum necessary to get into the BIOS (assuming it would start at all), pulling out everything but one stick of memory (the original I'd bought with the system), the CPU and the video card. It worked fine. I got into BIOS; everything looked good. I reassembled and reconnected everything except the CD and DVD drives. When I rebooted, everything was working fine. I was thinking it must've been a loose power connection or something. I shut down, reconnected the CD & DVD drives and tried to restart. No power. Aha! Must be a bad CD/DVD drive. I disconnected one drive. Still no power. Disconnected the other drive. Still no power. I was back to having the same components connected as I had previously, but I'm still getting no power at all.

So now I'm thinking bad PS? Maybe the power switch is bad?

[iranu]

Sounds very much like a damaged PSU. Have you got a spare one to put in and try it?

Otherwise invest in a new PSU.

[Gila-Man]

By process of elimination, I have discovered that my case fan was going, going, gone. Whenever I plugged it in to the power supply, the system was just plain dead. There must be a short in its power cable.