Hi guys,

I had a 4-yr old system that I built myself and was running perfectly smooth, but I decided to update it by adding 1G of RAM, an extra HD, a new PSU and a new case. I also installed linux, but I don't think that matters as I'm pretty sure this is a hardware issue.

Basically since I relocated my computer into the new case and things started happening. I had issues booting, but I figured out that the case was badly made and was shorting the mobo, so after figuring out where the problem was everything ran fine for about 2 weeks. Then strange things started happening. My sound card would not be detected linux but SOMETIMES it would show up all of a sudden and my sound would work. For a while that was the only problem. Then my PC would have issues booting up (i.e. it would turn on but the screen would show nothing) and I could not figure out what exactly I had to wiggle inside to make it work (but something eventually made it boot up).

Then at one point it just refused to boot up so I left it alone for 2 days and when I tried to boot up it gave me a continuous beep that you get when memory goes bad. So I tried playing around with the memory sticks, seeing if one of them went bad or if one of the sockets fried or something. It gave me really weird results:

Socket 1 = beep
Socket 2 = works fine
Socket 3 = beep
Socket 1 + 3 = WORKS
Socket 2 +3 = BEEP

All the sticks worked in one combo or another. I couldn't figure it out, but I just used the best available setting (1+3) and the machine ran fine for like 3 days. The sound card was getting detected fine, everything was smooth. Now yesterday it failed to boot up but then did on restart and worked fine. Today I started the comp and my sound card disappeared again.

I AM SO CONFUSED. How can it work for a few days/weeks and then start malfunctioning? It seems to me that the case is **** and is still shorting somewhere but I don't see where the problem is. I definitely screwed the mobo on correctly.

Any leads?

My specs:

AMD Athlon XP Barthon 2500+ 1.867 GhZ
DFI Lan Party Ultra Mobo
DDR333 (PC 2700) RAM = 1 x 1G (new), 2 x 512
Radeon 9800 Pro
Creative SoundBlaster Live 24bit
3 HDs: 1 x SATA (new), 2 x IDE
Rosewill 550W PSU (new)
Sunbeam Transformer Full Tower Case (new)

THANK YOU

Hello and welcome to PCHelpForum.

Sorry for the delay in reciving an answer to your thread.

We have a great Tech Team who will help you with your issue.

I will mark your thread as "Open" reading for the team.

Try removeing the motherboard and all components from the case and running it that way, and see if it works.