Memory or motherboard?

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daves87rs

daves87rs

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Trying to figure out the answer to this toughie...


Have a 6 year old Gateway desktop, which is giving me the three short beeps at start up. It will get to the gateway logo on screen, and shortly after that it gives those beeps, screen goes
"no signal", and just runs....(no loud sounds, whooshing, or just fan running) Computer has been running fine up until this point.

Has been a solid worker, and even with my wife's "Sims" playing, I've only been through a few video cards and an upgraded powersource. (card and source were last done almost two years ago.

From what I remember, it could either be the memory or the motherboard. (both have been on the computer since new. Kinda wondering if it might be the memory since my wife has a habit once in a while to just pull the cord if it does not turn off...

Happens to be this guy...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883113058
 
+1 to check the CMOS battery.

Should not be related to pulling the power cord out. A better thing to do when it won't shut down is to hold the power button down until it forces a shut down.
 
Originally Posted By: daves87rs


Kinda wondering if it might be the memory since my wife has a habit once in a while to just pull the cord if it does not turn off...



My guess...the HD has been crashed one too many times.
 
Originally Posted By: Doog
Originally Posted By: daves87rs


Kinda wondering if it might be the memory since my wife has a habit once in a while to just pull the cord if it does not turn off...



My guess...the HD has been crashed one too many times.


I agree.
 
My vote goes to the motherboard. If the memory is bad, it will either not startup at all, or it will have random freezing after it has been running for a while.
 
Originally Posted By: dparm
My vote goes to the motherboard. If the memory is bad, it will either not startup at all, or it will have random freezing after it has been running for a while.


I'm no computer pro, but there's a computer I'm working on replacing for a guy that does this too. There is a bulging cap on the MOBO and I believe it's getting flaky.
 
It definitely doesn't sound like a CMOS battery and it would be an unusual presentation for a bad hard drive. Bad RAM usually manifests itself as not booting or lock-ups, in less severe cases, you'll get file corruption, in more severe cases, with memory shared with the vid card, you get video corruption. In either case it doesn't normally POST and then fail in the manner depicted.

That said, I would first try pulling the hard drive and see if the post behaviour changes. Keep in mind this doesn't necessarily point to the drive being the culprit. But if you can get it to post then you can get it to run the UBCD and Memtest86+, which will allow you to test the RAM.

It does sound like the motherboard is the most likely culprit here. But do a little troubleshooting first just to see if you can narrow it down.
 
Originally Posted By: The_Eric
There is a bulging cap on the MOBO and I believe it's getting flaky.

This. Bulging/leaking capacitors are highly possible, even probable. Take a good look at all of them with a flashlight.
 
Originally Posted By: Bottom_Feeder
Originally Posted By: The_Eric
There is a bulging cap on the MOBO and I believe it's getting flaky.

This. Bulging/leaking capacitors are highly possible, even probable. Take a good look at all of them with a flashlight.

+1, could be your problem. Check it out anyway.
 
Originally Posted By: dparm
My vote goes to the motherboard. If the memory is bad, it will either not startup at all, or it will have random freezing after it has been running for a while.



It only makes it to the gateway "logo"....will not start up from there..


Though it did have a freeze several months back.......
 
It's a bad motherboard. My grandmothers year old gateway did this literally last week. Was fine before, then 3 beeps, no post, no boot (fans run). I tried a different PSU, different RAM, no change. She bought the service plan on it through Best Buy, so I took it over there and the geek squad guy noticed that some of the caps on the motherboard were in fact bulging. I hadn't even looked for that, as it's barely a year and a half old and I'd never seen caps that new do that before. It was sent out for repair, and sure enough. They replaced the motherboard, and it works perfectly again.
 
Originally Posted By: Nick R
It's a bad motherboard. My grandmothers year old gateway did this literally last week. Was fine before, then 3 beeps, no post, no boot (fans run). I tried a different PSU, different RAM, no change. She bought the service plan on it through Best Buy, so I took it over there and the geek squad guy noticed that some of the caps on the motherboard were in fact bulging. I hadn't even looked for that, as it's barely a year and a half old and I'd never seen caps that new do that before. It was sent out for repair, and sure enough. They replaced the motherboard, and it works perfectly again.



No fan running here....runs like it normally would. But at the moment I'm between the ram or motherboard....
 
Originally Posted By: daves87rs
Originally Posted By: Nick R
It's a bad motherboard. My grandmothers year old gateway did this literally last week. Was fine before, then 3 beeps, no post, no boot (fans run). I tried a different PSU, different RAM, no change. She bought the service plan on it through Best Buy, so I took it over there and the geek squad guy noticed that some of the caps on the motherboard were in fact bulging. I hadn't even looked for that, as it's barely a year and a half old and I'd never seen caps that new do that before. It was sent out for repair, and sure enough. They replaced the motherboard, and it works perfectly again.



No fan running here....runs like it normally would. But at the moment I'm between the ram or motherboard....


Fans should normally run when you turn the computer on so I'm not sure what you mean. Besides bad ram usually causes crashes and BSODs, not no post conditions
 
Originally Posted By: Doog
Originally Posted By: daves87rs


Kinda wondering if it might be the memory since my wife has a habit once in a while to just pull the cord if it does not turn off...



My guess...the HD has been crashed one too many times.


Pulling the cord is no different than shutting the computer down to the HDD. No different at all. Drives don't need to be "parked" like they had to 30 years ago anymore. The only problem that can occur from this is file corruption if the plug is pulled in the middle of a write, but certainly not a no boot condition.

This actually sounds much more like a swollen caps problem than anything else.
 
You can try to pull the memory and put it back. Vacuum out the motherboard. Also re-seat the video card and any other cards in slots. After that, I would not recommend spending anything on a six year old gateway.
 
CMOS battery wouldn't cause the three short beeps, that's indicative of a memory failure on some motherboards...can't be for certain though unless I knew what BIOS your pc was running.

Try swapping DIMMs/Banks and see if it changes.

The worst that could really happen with a CMOS battery being dead is usually system time/settings not being correctly saved.
 
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usually with memory failure both chips wont fail at same time.

try booting with 1 chip then the other in the appropriate slot.
(some boards wont boot with 1 chip in the wrong slot)

my $$$ as most others have said is on the MB, so much stuff can go bad on an aging MB compared to cpu or memory.
 
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