1 Diagnostic LED and a long beep followed by 3 short ones

[rldolph79]

Had my system up and running for about 2 years now, and everything has been perfect save for 1 fried PSU which got replaced about 2 months ago with the one in my sig.

 

About 2 weeks ago I hit the power and it wouldn't boot. It just hung at 1 diagnostic led lit and gave me one long beep followed by 3 short ones. Figured I'd try the simple fix and just set the safe boot jumper to 2-3, then back to 1-2 and tried booting again. Everything booted again no problems.

 

Was playing WoW today and my monitor suddenly went into standby mode as if the power had been shut off. Shut the computer down and rebooted only to have the same problem I was having before come up again. 1 diagnostic led lit and a long beep followed by 3 short beeps. Only problem is this time the safe boot didn't work.

 

Cant get it to boot for the life of me. Tried a CMOS clear as per exRoadies' instructions just to see if that work work, and no luck. I spend a decent amount of time researching to build this beast a couple years ago, but not having any issues with it I've grown a little rusty.

 

What's confusing me is that 1 led lit means that the video card has been detected, but 1 long beep followed by 3 short ones means that there's a problem with the video card. I don't have an extra video card laying around to test in the system, so my only option outside of taking it in for some help somewhere is gone. Anyone have any ideas, cause I'm clueless. Thanks in advance for your responses.

[Sharp]

Hello,

 

Could be the GFX card that has gone, what happens if you move the card to the other PCI-E slot?

[rldolph79]

I'll give it a try tonight when I get off work, but I came to the same conclusion.

 

The only nice part is I was able use this to convince my wife that I needed a new video card. Got the superclocked EVGA 8800 GTS in the mail, and assuming I dont miss the UPS guy friday I'm gonna throw it in and see if it'll work. I'll come back and update you tonight on if switching slots works out (and if it does I'm gonna tell my wife it didn't lol).

[rldolph79]

Swapped it over to the other slot and had the same results, so I pulled out the card completely and got the same results again. So...think we've got it pegged as a video card problem. I'll report back when I have the new card installed and let you know if it solved the problem.

 

If it doesn't work, I guess I'd be able to safely assume that I fried my motherboard...here's hoping it works with the new card.

[rldolph79]

Got the new vid card installed and everything is running perfectly now.

 

If anyone is on the fence about the new 8800 GTS 320MB you may as well get off, cause it's a fantastic card. Anyone running at 1600x1200 or less will see basically no drop from the 640MB version in todays games, and if you pick up one of the overclocked versions you can actually expect better performance from the 320MB version. Given that it costs $75 or $100 less than the stock 640 MB version it's pretty much a no brainer.

 

Thanks for the help Sharp.

[Sharp]

A beast of a card.

[rldolph79]

A beast to say the least. I know 3dmark isn't the a perfect predictor of in-game performance, but my scores in 3dmark03 and 3dmark05 (never did run 06 with the old card) were almost exactly double from the x850 XT. Gonna start overclocking my cpu and ram a bit after I get myself a new CPU cooler and see what kinda numbers I throw up. Should be fun.