Here is the sequence of events that best explain my problem..

PC - 768 MB P4 running win xp sp2 ..

1. i was surfing the net normally ; no heavy applications running

2. suddenly the monitor turns grey.

3. i restart the machine - one long never ending beep

4. i remove the RAM and put them back again & restart - no beep

5. i take out 1 ram & restart - no beep

6. i took out both RAM cards , LAN card ,disconnected power to all drives (hard drives , CD drive) , restart - still no beep

now i feel this may have something to do with motherboard or CPU !!

WHAT DO YOU GUYS SUGGEST?

Sid ..

What about the video card, did you try doing the pencil eraser on the gold contacts and re-seating it trick ? .If you have onboard VGA then do the pencil eraser trick on the memory.

Try one memory card then take it out and try the other one.

Try setting the bios to default values ( make a note of the settings before doing this )

and reset the CMOS.

System restore has saved my butt on more than one occaasion.

You should have at least one restore point avaialble.

In XP, if you boot to the bios, the option to restore should pop up first.

Beep codes are hard coded into the BIOS and vary from one motherboard manufacturer to another. Check your motherboard's instruction book or do an internet search on the beep codes for your specific mobo.

Previously, I have heard this one long sustained beep on two occasions. The first occurred when a key on the keyboard was inadvertently being held down during boot up. The second occasion indicated a problem with memory.

Good luck!

--RK

Here is the sequence of events that best explain my problem..

PC - 768 MB P4 running win xp sp2 ..

1. i was surfing the net normally ; no heavy applications running

2. suddenly the monitor turns grey.

3. i restart the machine - one long never ending beep

4. i remove the RAM and put them back again & restart - no beep

5. i take out 1 ram & restart - no beep

6. i took out both RAM cards , LAN card ,disconnected power to all drives (hard drives , CD drive) , restart - still no beep

now i feel this may have something to do with motherboard or CPU !!

WHAT DO YOU GUYS SUGGEST?

Sid ..

Had the same problem. Cleaning the contacts on the ram modules with a rubber pencil eraser will cure the fault. They tarnish in the heat and humidity of Thailand.

Guys .. i did all the pencil eraser n other tricks .. nothing worked .. took it to datait (where i had bought the pc) .. they checked and MoBo problem .. replace it for free as its under warantee.. just a 2 week wait ..

My son's motherboard has a set of diagnostic lights on the board, which help

me to understand what is wrong in a situation like this.

Check the book that came with the MB, or download it from the web.

That first beep is the POST, the power-on self test. If you are getting power to the motherboard, then it means that most likely the motherboard or CPU have failed. It could be a lack of RAM, so get that checked, and it might be a bad video card, so borrow one and try that...but the POST beep failures I have seen have all been mobo replacements.

hi'

I'l follow cathyy on this one, if you have a video card, it's dead!

if the video chip is onboard, then the mobo is dead!

one long beep and then no beep would tell me that you have no video card and the video chip died ...

you may try to boot your pc with another screen, but I doubt that you'll notice any change.

francois