I am looking at a computer for a freind. COMPAQ 4540. I get no beeps, and my hard drive will run continuously until i turn the power off. I ran it with nothing but the hard drive, monitor, keyboard and mouse. I have tried all of the components individually on another computer and they seem to function ok. My question is this: Is it possible that a dead CMOS battery will cause this problem? I dont get anything on my monitor as far as error messages or anything.It definitely seems to be hardware and more specifically motherboard related. Any help will be extremely appreciated. thanks!

Have you tried clearing the cmos with the jumper on the board,andleaving it off for a while,as far as the HDD running
few things to try... shut down fastfind, scan for virus,May be worth popping off the case and checking the motherboard connection.

also check to see if the IDE cable is slightly dislodged.
How old is this machine?? may need to update firmware??
What windows are you running?"if XP how much RAM do you have on your system and have you adjusted the size of the pagefile? and are you running office XP?"if you are go here"http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q282106

Just grabbing at straws here before bird day.

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I am guessing bad CPU or Motherboard. No Beeps is usually a really bad sign. Post more details and maybe there are more options to explore.

Budfred

Thanks for your interest and help yoda. I have tried to clear cmos with jumper. Pulled and reinstalled original battery. It is a 1999 running window 98 Second Edition. Do you think reinstalling windows would help?" how do i go about updating firmaware? Not sure if i mentioned it but i am not getting any post. I take it a dead cmos battery will not cause this problem? Well, I'll keep picking at it. and thanks again everyone. I hope you all have a great turkey day. Party on.

I believe that you would still get POST with a beep if the battery is dead, but I am not sure. Batteries are pretty cheap, so if it can be replaced easily, it may be worthwhile to do so. However, I suspect it is a more severe problem than that. If you can test the motherboard or CPU in another system, you can find out if it is one of them.

Budfred

Thanks bud I think i will do that. Your right the batteries are dirt cheap. might get a few haha. as far as trying on another system i think that is a great idea. I tried a known good hard drive, power supply etc all to no avail so far. Is it possible that the problem is in the chip/processor? or is the post info elsewhere on the motherboard? If i can change the chip would it be in my best interest to do so rather than hunting down a whole other mother board? Well, I will leave you all with that. If ya got any more ideas i will be more than willing to give them a shot. for now i am gonna head to bed. c y'all on the flip side. BTW i read your other postings talking about e-bay. On an off chance i logged onto e-bay and found this exact same system in perfect working condition. The auction ended 5 mintues after i got there and the final selling price was 51 bucks. ARGGGHHH!! oh well.

The BIOS settings that cause the beep are on the BIOS chip on the motherboard, but to POST (Power On Self Test), it checks the CPU and motherboard functions to see if they are ok. If they are, it will give a single beep to say so and then activate the video. If something is wrong with RAM or something like that, it will give a beep code which you can decipher if you know the BIOS brand. However, if it doesn't beep at all, that suggests that the CPU (processor) or motherboard may be fried. You can test either one. If you drop in a compatible CPU and the system works, you know that the CPU is the problem. If it doesn't work, you don't know what the problem is. If you have eliminated everything else, then it is almost certainly the motherboard, but you won't know for sure unless you test the CPU in a compatible motherboard to make sure it works. It could, of course, be both.

It is very odd that the hard drive would run the way you describe, this could suggest a short to the MB. I would also take the MB out of the case and test it on a nonconductive surface with minimal stuff connected - RAM, CPU, video, keyboard, maybe floppy drive, and of course, power. If it then POSTs it is a good clue that you have a short and need to find it.

Oh, and updating the firmware probably applies to flashing the BIOS. This means getting updated BIOS software from the HP/Compaq website and installing it. This can be tricky because if you use the wrong one or get interrupted in the install, you end up with a rather unattractive doorstop. If you can't POST, you also can't flash the BIOS, although you could buy an update BIOS chip or send your's in to be updated. Probably not worth it unless you can get it to POST.

Budfred