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| Thread ID: 55448 | 2005-03-10 19:15:00 | XP, SP2 & Strange Beep code. | B.M. (505) | Press F1 |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 332880 | 2005-03-10 19:15:00 | This one has got me goosed! Background: The neighbour brought me over his sons computer which was hardly running. Turned out he had the finest selection of viruses known to mankind. Actually he had no less than 11,121 infected files of which 416 couldn’t be repaired. (Yes, he had NAV but it was disabled, probably by a virus). Anyway, a format and re-installation of XP Pro was the chosen way out and everything went fine until I went to install SP2 from the disk generously provided by PC World. About a third of the way through the installation the computer hung on a M?????.exe file. Everything was completely frozen so a reset was the only way out. Now for the problem: Upon re-boot I get nothing on the screen, not a flicker, and a longer than normal beep from the system speaker which is repeated every 4.5 seconds. That’s 1.5 second beep followed by 4.5 seconds silence which is repeated continiously. Ok, I Googled the Phoenix beep codes but can’t find anything like what I’m hearing. If it’s any help the keyboard lights flash on and off normally, the cd ROMs lights flash normally and then Beeeeeeeep! and she’s history. :( Can anybody throw any light on the situation? What could SP2 do to stop me getting through the POST? Motherboard: Micro-Star MS-6390 BIOS: Phoenix D686 |
B.M. (505) | ||
| 332881 | 2005-03-10 19:20:00 | One long beep like that usually means faulty RAM. Have you got any other RAM you can put in to test? Or if there is more than one RAM stick in the PC, try take one out at a time and see what happens. |
CYaBro (73) | ||
| 332882 | 2005-03-10 20:56:00 | Just a quick update: In desperation I removed the CMOS battery and had a cup of tea . When I replaced it I got Video and a message “CMOS Checksum Error – Defaults Loaded” . So, I re-entered the time and date and let it go . Then I got the checkdisk dialogue box and it found hundreds of crossed up files all pertaining to SP2 which it fixed . Then a message appeared informing me Set-up was interrupted and Windows was restoring Prior Configuration . Then a message that the system was unstable and I must uninstall SP2 . Fine, did that, but when Windows restarted a balloon came up on the taskbar informing me that Windows had found new hardware and it promptly went about reinstalling everything . Now I see the modem has been moved from Comm3 to Comm4 and I’m told Comm3 is in use but I can’t find by what? Lord only knows what else had happened to my nice clean reinstall! Question is, do I start again from scratch or try installing SP2 again to see what happens? I’ve never liked XP and like it even less now! Grrrrrrrrrrr! There's only the one stick of 256 DDR and I don't have any DDR RAM elsewhere unfortunately . I wonder what SP2 did to the CMOS????? |
B.M. (505) | ||
| 332883 | 2005-03-10 21:06:00 | I doubt SP2 would stuff the BIOS up at all . The only reason, why something went bung, after u installed SP2 is: 1 . You had spyware, and installing SP2 with spyware is a no-no . You WILL have probs . 2 . You have something like TV Media I think its called, which is some kind of spyware as well . Installing SP2, if this is installed, will ALSO give u probs . MS have a fix for this . 3 . Go to the com ports in XP / device manager . Delete the com ports there . And delete the modem, under the modem entry . (If XP detected your modem before and installed drivers, XP will , or SHOULD detect it and reinstall the drivers for the modem again) . Usually, if the BIOS brings up that error, it has something to do with the BIOS . NOT Windows . |
Speedy Gonzales (78) | ||
| 332884 | 2005-03-11 00:30:00 | trust your instincts dump XP go win 3.x probably the most stable as it's DOS | Blade2 (6577) | ||
| 332885 | 2005-03-11 00:51:00 | Well believe it or not it’s up and running with no problems so far. I thought there was nothing to loose by trying to reinstall SP2 and note exactly the name of the .exe file it hung on. Wouldn’t you know it, it installed no problem and we now have Office XP, AdAware, SystemWorks, AVG7, Avrobat Reader, Everest etc all running no problem. Even the Modem is working on Com4. So what happened? Well, I can’t see it being Spyware or a Virus as the HDD had been formatted and XP Pro with SP1 installed from the original disk. That was it, I was just trying to bring the OS up to date with SP2. The only theory I can come up with is that a previous Virus had been fiddling with the CMOS Setup and my removal of the battery restored the defaults. However, I would still like to know what the 1.5 second beep every 4.5 seconds was trying to tell me and why the screen was absolutely dead. :( |
B.M. (505) | ||
| 332886 | 2005-03-11 00:55:00 | Win XP is the virus; win3.x for all.... | Blade2 (6577) | ||
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