The last few months while I'd be surfing the web, my computer will fade to black. No goodbye for Aol of anything, just go black and energy saver logo fades out.

When I attempt to restart it, all I get is a beep,wait a couple seconds, then 5-7 more beeps, a couple more seconds pass, the one or two more beeps. The screen stays black. Ocassionaly, I can unplug the tower for a couple seconds and it will fire right up while other times, it may stay FUBAR till the next day. I'm usually on in the early morning hours 3-5am so I don't think over crowded phone lines have anything to do with it.

I have an AMD 128 Mb ram with 58% resources free.

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For a fee..I'm happy to be..your backdoor man

Richard Dorrough
Tulsa, Ok
'70 Nomad (CHVELLE)
19.84@68.05mph
ACES # 789
TC # 453

Rich, wondering if you're suffering from heat buildup. I"d recommend you open the case and start looking at the fans. Also give it a good dusting and cleaning. Get a can of compressed air and blow thru the power supply box-they're notorious for holding dust & dirt. Make sure all fans operate freely, including the one in the power supply.

Other than that, make sure your video card is seated properly. Someone else will have to decode the POST (Power On Start Test) beep codes. Good luck!

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71 Ragtop, finally under reconstruction!
MCC #347, TC (Gold) #174
N3JHV@bellatlantic.net

I'll be willing to bet money it's JUST what Sid Said

sounds like a video or memory beep too me... Bios Beeps are usually shorter... 2-8-2 if I remember correctly.. Video is usually a longer beep sequence.. however memory is up there too.. So make sure all of your cards are seated properly, as well as your memory.. if you still get the beeps it could mean that something is failing (video etc) try the heat thing.. take a look in there.. open the case and run the PC with a household fan pointing inside the case.. see if the problem goes away..

Richard.

58% resources is way low, that needs to be addressed, But I don't think it is causing your current problem.

What speed AMD? some of the older amd chips were very heat sensitive.

You have received very good advice above, I believe 3 beeps is memory 8 is video. What kind of Video card? Many of them also have a cooling fan.

Clean the fans on both the processor and the video card.(if you have one) If you have a socket 7 amd processor u can buy heatsink compound to help distribute heat between the fan and CPU.

Have you been getting any blue screens or anything else along those lines? Also as a test go into your BIOS and completely disable any power saving features.

E-mail me if u need help

Tim


[This message has been edited by BLU69 (edited 09-07-2001).]

I have to work all weekend, so when I get back into town Monday, I will give it a good cleaning and double check the connections.

I've deleted a bunch of those media player movies to try and free up some memory.

TIM, Thanks for the offer. I have an AMD 400 Mhz machine. I know my BIOS is old/out of date but I got burned by an fly-by-night computer company and the BIOS they used, didn't show up on the manufactures listings.

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For a fee..I'm happy to be..your backdoor man

Richard Dorrough
Tulsa, Ok
'70 Nomad (CHVELLE)
19.84@68.05mph
ACES # 789
TC # 453

To help determin if it is video you can try giving a few keyboard commands. If you have several open programs when the screen goes black try an <alt><tab> (switches between programs) and watch your hard drive light for activity and listen for the hard drive. Once you cycle through all the open programs it may not show any more movement. You can also hit the <windows key><up arrow><enter><enter> and that will shut the computer down if it's alive. You should hear the PC shutting down...

Good luck and let us know what you find...

58 percent resources is definitely too low. Many of the problems that most computer users have can be resolved by getting those resources higher - maybe not in your case, but I think it's definitely worth a try. Even if it doesn't fix this particular problem, it will make your computer boot faster and run more smoothly. Running a computer at 58 percent is like trying to drag race with a trunk full of bricks. In Windows 98, there's an application called "msconfig" (just go to the start button, up to run, type "msconfig" and hit OK). In this app, go to the "startup" tab, it's usually the furthest to the right. Go through this and uncheck anything you can. The only imperative one is System Tray (or systray). DEFINITELY uncheck anything that says "load power profile". These apps are set to automatically turn off parts of your system, and may be part of the problem. When you uncheck these apps, you're not uninstalling them, just keeping them from loading automatically when the computer starts. you can still reach them through the start menu if you need to. If you don't use it EVERY TIME, better to just open it manually than to have it start automatically. Good luck! Let us know how it turns out!

Definitely check the heat, though . . .