anyone fancy settling an argument...
 

Hi all..
was hoping one or more of you guys can settle an argument for me.
a friend of mine is having a problem with his pc. it was working fine one day... wasnt the next. after he had one of the technician where he works take a look at it, he also asked me for a second opinion.
He is getting 4 short beeps on POST...then a plain black screen.
the technician reckoned it was a hard drive failure... i was thinking along the lines of the motherboard or a device connected to it.. video card perhaps.
anyways.. my mate bought a new hard drive and binned the old one on the advice of the technician... and is now a little unhappy that i refused to install it for him... reason being that i didnt think it was the hard drive in the first place, and that if the technician was so sure I'd rather him do the job.

i'll eat humble pie if am wrong, but wouldnt it be unusual for a hard drive to generate beeps on POST ???

Re: anyone fancy settling an argument...
 

He could have tried a remove/reseat routine. What BIOS is it?

Re: anyone fancy settling an argument...
 

If the hard drive is malfunctioning - for example not spinning up. It is possible that you could get the 'beep' code you described.

Mind you - of course you would eliminate that by unplugging the hard drive and seeing if it still 'beeped'...

Re: anyone fancy settling an argument...
 

Try this site...

http://www.amptron.com/html/bios.beepcodes.html

Re: anyone fancy settling an argument...
 

thanks for the responses guys...

it's an american megatrends BIOS ... should have mentioned that earlier.

thanks for the link gazzae... i had looked at that site... along with loads of others :-) ... which was one of the reasons i suspected the motherboard.

i dont have the pc at the moment...my mate took it to his works technician to install the hard drive :-) but if he come back to me i'll try your advice dilligaf....

not sure on a remove/reseat routine... you have any more info on it there nffc...

Re: anyone fancy settling an argument...
 

I'm with you 50420. If the problem was with the HDD then there would probably be some useful message like 'unable to read disk drive'. If the BIOS is resorting to a beep code then it must be something fundamental on the mobo or the graphics card.

Try this:
http://www.bioscentral.com/beepcodes/amibeep.htm

Re: anyone fancy settling an argument...
 

All i mean is disconnecting all the cards, cables etc and putting them back in.

Re: anyone fancy settling an argument...
 

Try different ram or remove first stick if he has more than 1 as it could be system timer or first block of ram bad

POST searches for errors in ram cpu mobo and gfx,ive never known a post error caused by a hdd,mind you ive known asrock boards beep at you if you dont connect a floppy and bios is defaulted to boot up floppy seek

Re: anyone fancy settling an argument...
 

thanks for the confidence altis... that was my way of thinkin too...regarding the hard drive errors.

my mate just called and seems the technician is now on holidays for 3 weeks so wants me to have a crack on it.
having the pc back at around 4:30pm...so will have a go with nffc's advice first then take it from there...

cheers guys...will keep you informed

Re: anyone fancy settling an argument...
 

Beep codes that can be fixed is usually video card, ram, or much less these days processor (slot varient cpu's had issues). A hard drive failing would not stop the computer from posting, and you could easily prove that by disconecting the drive as you dont need one to boot.

hth

K

Re: anyone fancy settling an argument...
 

I wouldn't have thought it was the HD because even if it was, then it would still get out of POST. Some exceptions are fancy mobos with disk doctors built in, but you'd get a clear message about it, not beeps.

Usually the beeps happen when the RAM is dead, etc.

Makes a change to settle an argument on here. Mostly we just like to start them :)

Re: anyone fancy settling an argument...
 

The first to always check when you get diufferent beeps at POST are to see if you still have your motherboard manual as it is often explained in there.
eg. 1 beep = this, 2 beeps = that.
If you dont have the manual, make a note of the motherboard model and number at POST and google it. You should be able to find it online somewhere.

As has been suggested, reseating the cards and checking RAM is correctly in place, testing with only minimum components and then reseating them one by one is a way of finding out the problem.

Before binning that Hard drive, you could have tried it out in another machine.

Re: anyone fancy settling an argument...
 

i have the pc back now...so will make a start on it after some food :-)

I had asked my mate if he still has the hard drive... but he binned it in british steel 2 weeks ago...so is no doubt been crushed or melted down by now..
havent had a look at it for 2 weeks....and as there's no hard drive in there at the moment ( the new one is still in its box) so will try a boot without installing the new hard drive ...and take it from there i supppose


cheers guys

Re: anyone fancy settling an argument...
 

rite... booted up with no hard drive....gets the 4 beeps.
removed the graphics card and reinserted...tried a reboot..still with no hard drive... no beeps...yay. and gets a no bootable device error message.

thought we were getting somewhere until i came to install the new hard drive... nowhere to mount it !!!

phoned my mate whos pc it is... turns out, along with binning the old HDD he also binned the mounting bracket :-)

Re: anyone fancy settling an argument...
 

:LOL: There's a lesson to be learned there.

Stick it in a floppy bay.

Re: anyone fancy settling an argument...
 

If it's still not working- which it seemed to be a seating prob with the gfx card- then remove things and keep rebooting until it works. Then you know what's faulty cos it's been removed :)

Re: anyone fancy settling an argument...
 

managed to sort out a temp position for the new HDD...managed to get one screw into one side of the HDD... the other side being propped up with a spacer to provide some support for that one screw.... jeez am begining to feel like a cowboy :)
and windows is installing as we speak... fingers crossed