boot failure

[Allez]

I have an Athlon 3200 with a Gigabyte mobo (Award bios) that has been working fine for months. All of a sudden today the screen went black; upon trying to reboot, it stops after 1 short beep and identification of the CPU. Sometimes it stops after the following step - checking the memory (which is OK). Hitting 'delete' doesn't go to setup. I've tried clearing the CMOS, reseating the RAM, and using a different keyboard. Any ideas?

[Paleo Pete]

Are you getting any video? That's not clear from your post, although you said you cleared CMOS and can't get into BIOS, which indicates you do see a picture...

Try a different power supply, if possible try different RAM, preferably known good RAM, a new CMOS battery might not be a bad idea, and if nobody else has any suggestions that get results, we might later have you try a "bare bones" boot as we call it - Motherboard, CPU/fan/heatsink, RAM, keyboard and video. Wait on that till we run out of small things to check.

[sia]

In the case problem is not caused by hardware it can be a virus that had flashed the bios.
But as I know Gigamobos have dual BIOS, enabling the second one and flash the main
may solve the problem.

[Allez]

Thanks for the replies. I figured out what the problem was - one of my RAM went bad; when I removed it the computer booted up fine with the remaining memory.

[Quantax]

That's interesting because oftentimes with bad RAM you'd hear several extended beeps instead of the one short one you got.

[Allez]

That's interesting because oftentimes with bad RAM you'd hear several extended beeps instead of the one short one you got.
I don't know if it matters, but my MB uses an Award BIOS. It was set to stop on all errors except keyboard errors, which now that I think of it might not be a good idea as I couldn't get into setup.

[Allez]

Well, maybe it's not the memory.
I got new memory, replaced both 512 MB sticks and again it stops on booting. The only difference is that there are 1-2 long beeps, and then a short beep. If I take out the second stick, it boots up fine. I tried putting the second stick in the 3rd memory slot, and again it stops. I also tried reflashing with the BIOS, with no difference. I do get video. Also, if I change the BIOS setting to not stop on errors it still stops. Ideas?

[r53s]

If you're sure that the two sticks are the same,
then you can try technical support from the memory
manufacturer...

[Allez]

If you're sure that the two sticks are the same,
then you can try technical support from the memory
manufacturer...

Did exactly that. From my post on another thread:


Spoke with Chris (2nd level tech support) - problem is related to memory 'ranks'. My mother board only supports 3 ranks of DDR400. Each memory module I have has 2 ranks; therefore with 2 modules it is too many ranks for my mother board at that speed, whereas 1 module is fine. Apparently there is an unofficial problem with some AMD boards with this. The solution is to use single rank modules.

You cannot tell how many 'ranks' a memory module uses (eg by it being single- or double-sided etc), but Kingston can tell from some of the numbers on your memory.

Unfortunately the single rank memory I need is backordered.