Computer wont boot

[[THANATOS].Teo]

when i try to boot up the tower goes through its usual light display and the fans start up, but the screen light remains orange and theres a horn like sound coming from the tower every 3 seconds. it started happening yesterday after the power went out and then came back on 2 times for half seconds before finally shutting off but then it booted again yesterday obviously cuz i was playing... any ideas?

[[THANATOS].Homebrew]

sounds like the problems I'm having with NerdKilla.

[[THANATOS].Fragaholic]

listen to the beeps and compare it to this(about mid page):

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[[THANATOS].Shiver-]

[THANATOS Wrote:.Teo"]when i try to boot up the tower goes through its usual light display and the fans start up, but the screen light remains orange and theres a horn like sound coming from the tower every 3 seconds. it started happening yesterday after the power went out and then came back on 2 times for half seconds before finally shutting off but then it booted again yesterday obviously cuz i was playing... any ideas?

CPU temperature?

[[THANATOS].Metal]

If it's a steady tone with no breaks, just a solid BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE, you have a hardware issue.

Although uncommon, a power short can fuck up BIOS settings due to the fact that they're stored via a charge on your CMOS battery (the big ass watch battery on your mobo).

When you boot the machine again, rapidly press DEL (not backspace) until you get to BIOS. Check the PC health status to see wtf is goin on with that processor. You should be around 35-40 degrees C, and your voltages should be matching or close to it (IE 12v should be 11.5 or better). Reset to defaults while you're in there.

[[THANATOS].Teo]

going into bios wont do me any good cuz the screen displays nothing, im on my pc posting this. it finally booted after i let it boot and beep for a while and then shut it down and restarted.. this pos is a pos

[[THANATOS].Sneye.GT]

yeah, as Frag said, listen to the beeps, if it's a hardware issue (sounds like it) the beeps will tell you what the problem is (to an extent). And yes, also, if you CAN get into bios/cmos, try to get to the voltage/temp. area. It will tell you what temp your mobo and cpu are running at. Most do anyway. Yeah, does sound like Brews Nerdkilla problem too, in which case I'd suspect a cracked cpu, fux0red mobo, bad cpu fan/voltage and/or bad ram stick.

[[THANATOS].Shiver-]

<disclaimer: thread hijack not intended>

What if you get past the little start up things, get Windows to show the little blue bars loading thing, black screen... cursor... no log in part, and stays there (Windows XP). A friend had me wanting to help them with a computer doing that the other day.. CPU temp was fine, and voltages I knew nothing about so I didn't guess.

Good luck, Teo.

[[THANATOS].Sneye.GT]

[THANATOS Wrote:.Shiver-"]<disclaimer: thread hijack not intended>

What if you get past the little start up things, get Windows to show the little blue bars loading thing, black screen... cursor... no log in part, and stays there (Windows XP). A friend had me wanting to help them with a computer doing that the other day.. CPU temp was fine, and voltages I knew nothing about so I didn't guess.

Good luck, Teo.

I get that on about 40% of my fresh installs. Kill power, wait 10 secs, reboot with cdrom still in, hit whatever when it says to boot from cd, and treat it as a fresh fresh install, format drive, start from scratch, let windoze attempt to install again. If it continually fucks up, try doing a fresh install on another hard drive, or get like hirens boot cd and check your ram and hard drive. Never forget, Fdisk /mbr can do wonders.

[[THANATOS].-Hades]

IDK but sounds like your RAM might be fucked up or graphics card.

[[THANATOS].Metal]

[THANATOS Wrote:.Teo"]going into bios wont do me any good cuz the screen displays nothing, im on my pc posting this. it finally booted after i let it boot and beep for a while and then shut it down and restarted.. this pos is a pos

In that case you would either move your CMOS jumper to reset (which can be picky on some computers), or pop out the battery and put it back in. Either way resets you to defaults. Rule of thumb is to do the jumper first since you can possibly damage the CMOS battery with static.

You've booted up now, which means it might be in intermittent failure. Usually if your RAM is bad you won't boot period, so it may be a CPU voltage issue. If your CPU has power saving it could be that since power saving manipulates voltages to the CPU and reduces the clock multipliers to save energy when not under load.

Here's what I would do:

Keep an eye on it. If it's still acting up, reset BIOS config to defaults and see if it still reproduces the error.
If that doesn't work you need to isolate the piece of hardware that's going to shit, pull out your hardware components one by one, attempting to boot each time until your down to ram, cpu, and a monitor connection. Once your down to those 3 components, if it's still being a slut, alternate booting on each ram stick.

[[THANATOS].Zer0-^GT]

I had this problem with my OLD pc sometimes... I popped out the battery and unplugged the power cord. Put the battery back in after a couple of mins and the power cord too.. then boot the PC up

Did you try to overclock stuff? Or did it just starting to act weird?