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Eomer · 08-14-2006, 07:51 PM

Sorry for yet another one, but this one has me stumped. My parents have a P4-2.4ghz system that's about 2-3 years old. Not a great computer, but it's done it's thing without any problems to this point. However, in the past couple days it's been refusing to boot for some reason, and it has me stumped.

When you hit the power button, it briefly turns on and starts spinning up the fans and HD, but within about 2 seconds they all shut down. However the power light remains on until you hold the button in for a few seconds. No beeps, nothing. It doesn't do this every time, sometimes it boots fine.

Right away I thought "oh, it's memory" and made a memtest86 bootable. And sure enough, each and every time it gets to the third test, it freezes solid (stops responding, and the light on the USB MS mouse blinks on and off). I went and picked up a new stick of ram, and installed it. First time I attempt to boot, it fails. I get it to boot into memtest86, and again it fails on the third test. Symptoms remain the same.

Any ideas? Something DOES seem goofy with the memory, because in the BIOS it listed the RAM as 505 or something with the old 512 stick, and now with a 1gb stick it's listsed at 1016mb. Is the motherboard or CPU done? Any surefire ways to test?

At this point it just looks like they'll have to get a new computer, cause replacing the CPU or motherboard would be difficult if not impossible (not sure on socket or chipset, I don't follow Intel, but it's a genuine Intel board).

08-14-2006, 07:51 PM	#1 (permalink)
Eomer You mean I can change this? Neat! Join Date: Feb 2002 Posts: 10,559 +44 Internets	Comp Trouble Sorry for yet another one, but this one has me stumped. My parents have a P4-2.4ghz system that's about 2-3 years old. Not a great computer, but it's done it's thing without any problems to this point. However, in the past couple days it's been refusing to boot for some reason, and it has me stumped. When you hit the power button, it briefly turns on and starts spinning up the fans and HD, but within about 2 seconds they all shut down. However the power light remains on until you hold the button in for a few seconds. No beeps, nothing. It doesn't do this every time, sometimes it boots fine. Right away I thought "oh, it's memory" and made a memtest86 bootable. And sure enough, each and every time it gets to the third test, it freezes solid (stops responding, and the light on the USB MS mouse blinks on and off). I went and picked up a new stick of ram, and installed it. First time I attempt to boot, it fails. I get it to boot into memtest86, and again it fails on the third test. Symptoms remain the same. Any ideas? Something DOES seem goofy with the memory, because in the BIOS it listed the RAM as 505 or something with the old 512 stick, and now with a 1gb stick it's listsed at 1016mb. Is the motherboard or CPU done? Any surefire ways to test? At this point it just looks like they'll have to get a new computer, cause replacing the CPU or motherboard would be difficult if not impossible (not sure on socket or chipset, I don't follow Intel, but it's a genuine Intel board).