I have a very old PC with an AMD Athlon processor. I have had it turned off for a while but had to power it up recently to get some data off it. It powered up fine but almost straight away the monitor picture started to fade, (darkening like the contrast dial was turned) but then reappear. This happened a couple of times but then seemed to stabilise. Then in the middle of transferring my data to a USB stick the picture froze and CRTL/ALT/DELETE wouldn't restart the system.
On a hard reboot the system appeared to start normally, lights, fans etc, but the processor started a regular intermittent beep (continuously - only stopped by turning off the PC) and the monitor did not power up with the usual loading screens.
I have previously had a video card failure on this PC where the monitor simply powered off and on reboot the processor beep code was long beep and 2 short beeps - this is not the same as that event, monitor power issue is the same ie. no picture but events leading up to it and beep code are different.

Do I have to replace the video card again or is this more serious?

I would appreciate any help you can give me!

Kate

hi Kate, welcome to the PCHF!

From your description, my first assumption would be you've got your monitor plugged into the back of the power supply?

First place to start is the power supply, then test the memory. After that CPU and onto the Motherboard.

Video card should be fine, and i'm putting my money on the Poiwer supply right now.

Thanks GaRHaR,

Please can you just elaborate a bit for me? I did a full power cycle on the processor and monitor although I didn't check whether the sockets were properly in place - none of it had been unplugged from the power surge protector previously, just the mains connection to the wall.

The monitor light goes green when the power is turned on but then flicks to orange standby and does not respond when the processor is turned on.

What else to do with the power supply should I look at?

OK, Googling "amd athlon bios beep code", brings up this:

BiosCentral - Award BIOS Beep Codes

Where:
Repeating (endless loop)Memory errorCheck for improperly seated or missing memory.

Make any sense? I guess I have to open the box and check if something has been knocked out of place? Whereabouts is the memory located?

Hi Kate, the RAM is at the bottom of this picture and the slots (yours should be similar) are at the top of the pic

Thanks Hengis,

The memory looked ok, was seated fine. When I took it out and started the sytem the beeping stayed the same. Not sure if it wiould do this anyway if there was no RAM?

I have got my hands on some free RAM - it is HP 256Mb DDR PC2700 non-ECC

Looking at my motherboard info it says it can support this memory

System MemoryThree 168 pin 3.3V PC133 DIMM sockets
Supports up to 1.5G SDRAM
Supports 66/100/133 MHz Synchronous DRAM and VCM SDRAM
And 66MHz EDO DRAM

Are these compatible? The notches look different which suggests no to me.. but it would probably fit because the one notch it has is in the right place to fit in the slot.
Is DDR a type of DIMM?

If I put it in anyway and start up will it damage the RAM/motherboard?

Kate

Hi Kate, unfortunatly your motherboard does not support DDR.

It only supports the memory before that, which was SDRAM. Which would be quite hard to find right now.

Will leave Hengis to help with the rest of the issues.