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General discussion

Motherboard not beeping :-(

Jan 17, 2004 11:18PM PST

Hi. I've just sold a motherboard to a friend, and he's just called me saying it's not working. The motherboard is a Biostar M7TDF, with award BIOS, 256mb DDR SDRAM, a P4 1.7ghz and an AGP graphics card (not sure what).

When turned on, everything lights up and the fan whirrs, but there's nothing on the screen and the motherboard doesn't beep. What's wrong? Is it the motherboard, the CPU, the RAM, what? I really need to know this so that I don't have to give him a refund, and of course to retain his trust.

Any ideas anyone?

Discussion is locked

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Re:Motherboard not beeping/if it worked before....
Jan 17, 2004 11:52PM PST

If this was working for you, something went wrong with the installation. It may or may not have been a fatal error. No beeps or post activity might suggest a bad power connection. Do you know if the board has an LED for the control voltage and does it come on? It's not uncommon for there to be a short circuit on the non component side of the board if there is a stand off that has no screw hole in the MB for it. The installation needs to be inspected closely. You can also strip the installation to just the essentials (CPU, video and RAM) to begin ruling things out.

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Re:Motherboard not beeping :-(
Jan 17, 2004 11:52PM PST

When faced with a non-beeping board, I strip it down to motherboard, CPU/HSF, power supply and the speaker. If it beeps I build it up.

But before all that, consider that transport can cause a board to come unplugged (partially or ???)

With the power off, reseat all the parts that you can.

Be sure that you have a better than average power supply and that the reset button has not become stuck in the depressed position. Hint: Unplug that from the board.

Bob

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Re:Motherboard not beeping :-(
Jan 17, 2004 11:54PM PST

Is the motherboard correctly conneted to the case speaker so you can hear the beeping?

Try it with only memory, processor and video card in it, nothing else plugged in but a floppy drive. Did you supply the board with memory that worked for you, or was it added?

Look for a short to the case, try using the board on a piece of cardboard with just the minimal components installed.

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Re:Re:Motherboard not beeping :-(
Jan 18, 2004 3:38AM PST

Hi. Thankyou all for your suggestions. I'll pass them on to him when I see him tomorrow. We've tried it with just the memory, processor and video card, and still no joy. I'll see if I can find another case speaker to see if this one's faulty.

Thanks again! I may be back if I can't get it to work Wink

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Re:Re:Re:Motherboard not beeping :-(
Mar 4, 2004 3:20AM PST

I had the same problem

You may have ESD ur processor or the processor is not compatible to the mb. Or the mb bios is not up-to-date to handle the processor