If your PC is beeping... its trying to tell you what's wrong. Each motherboard has a code. So many beeps mean this, another sequence means something else. There a short and long beeps.

To find out what your PC is trying to say, time to dig out the MB or PC manual. So at least you have a starting point..

Some things are easy to fix... Like replacing the powerr supply, just a few screws, and a couple plugs.

I think you mean CUSL2. That board is a great board, but fussy about certain things such as Ram, CPU fan placement, Power Supply, and heat in general.
Certain sound cards have been known to cause problems with the board as well. It does NOT to my knowledge have the infamous capacitor failure problem which Tor's Abit board has suffered from.

Have you made any hardware changes or any other changes prior to the onset of the problem?

John

I'll be out all day, but I'll try to get back to this late tonight (EST)

The most important thing in any troubleshooting is not to jump to conclusions. You have already concluded that your problem is the motherboard. You could be right, of course, but since motherboards generally don't fail (except in overclocked systems), I'd look elsewhere.

The first thing to do is to see if you can get into the BIOS. Do you know which key or keys activate your motherboard's BIOS? Generally, you press the F1, F2, or DEL key shortly after power is applied, and this causes the BIOS screen to appear.

I guess you did mention that you are not getting any screen display at all. If this is true, I would recommend opening the computer (with the power off, of course), and unplugging and re-plugging various connectors. Remove all plug-in boards, and then plug them back in (i.e., "re-seat" them). Then, leave the cover off, but plug your external equipment (keyboard, monitor, and mouse, at least) back in, and try another boot.

If you still get nothing, try unplugging the disk drives, and unplugging every single external peripheral except the keyboard, mouse and monitor. The goal of this step is to remove anything that might be affecting the boot up.

To add to what johnmeyer suggests..., be sure to pull out your video card and memory chips and clean the edges before reseating them (can use a white eraser for that). Those are the two culprits most often the cause of boot failure. Usually you will get three short beeps, or a long beep with two short beeps.

Most often I will pull all periperal cards out and pull all connecting cables from hard drives, cd drives etc. Just get down to the basics.

As john mentioned, you just wnat to be able to get to the bios screen at this point. I'm not sure, but the mb you have may have the ability to give you a rough idea of the voltages coming in from the power supply. If you can get into the bios, check those voltages. You do not want to be more than + or - 5% in any direction for all voltages.

Right now I am running the asus p4p800 deluxe. It's great!

Hope things work out!!

Galen

THanks guys. great suggestions and I'm going to look into them. When my PC crashed it was already 1am.. so I havn't had time to break it down and try those things...

But what I'm REALLY saying is...in light of this failure I was going to upgrade anyway sooo...
Can anyone recommend a good Motherboard ??

I've looked into that ASUS P4P800Deluke....looks good. I found one with a P4 2.8 processor w/800 FSB for about $280

Thanks

I've been had good luck with SOYO - though you may pay a little more for the boards. The P4I875P Dragon 2 Platinum one I just built (well, maybe it's 8 months old now) has been very stable.

I have a ASUS P4P800Deluxe. Rock solid stable, loaded with features very easy to overclock. While it is just fluff, the computer even talks during boot letting you know it booted the OS. Suppose to speak any error messages as well. Don't know, haven't had any yet. :-)

BillyBoy's first post is spot on. The beeps are telling you what the problem is. In the MB's manual it should tell you what each sequence means such as 2 short 1 long = bad memory, 1 long = dead battery etc. The devil is in the details, of course if you are hell bent on upgrading the MB and CPU, go for it but as I do this daily you more than likely have a simple/inexpensive fix ahead of you.

MJ

The Asus CUSL2 was one of the best. I would fix the problem and keep it.

John

Did you examine the caps as referenced in TorS' reply? I can tell you from experience that this problem is real. My first bad cap board is at Epox right now having the caps replaced.

Regards

Al

P.S. I do agree that this is a wonderful excuse to get a new board though!

You need to realize that if you change motherboards, you might not be able to boot up with your current C drive. Different motherboards use different IDE chipsets and the Windows you have loaded looks for a specific set of drivers for the board that was used when you first loaded Windows on the C drive.

I'm going through this right now, as I'm moving up from a Gigabyte board to an ECS board, and, yes, it uses a different chipset. When booting, the screen displays an ominous red screen wih text to the effect that the PC was halted in order to prevent damage.

But there's hope. You can load in a universal set of drivers. Check out this page:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;314082&Product=winxp

You will probably also have to "reactivate" Windows XP.

THanks for the repies and help...the point was kind of missed and right on the money..
I'm going to upgrade the Motherboard/cpu ANYWAY...and .. I am going to fix the old one if I can...put it on Ebay.. I have all the spare parts to build an entirely new system.

What I mostly wanted were motherboard recomendations. Thanks those helped and I think I'm going with the P4P800 delux w/P4 2.8 800fsb.

However... I did take a quick look at the MB last night. Here's what happened :
* Removed sound card...booted up to windows, but since I neglected to plug the mouse in I had to reboot....
* started again with mouse...NO RESPONSE....
* Went back..removed the DELTA card...booted up..
* Tried it again... I get Beeps this time (before it didnt even give me that) they are evenly timed beeps of alternate pitches (like a british siren in hte movies)

I couldnt find my ASUS Manual...so I went online and downloaded one. there's no refernce to those types of beeps in t he manual so I'l t ry and contact ASUS today.

At least now I know it's not the hard drive. I'm still suffering from sleep deprevation.. so I didnt break the machine down to scratch and build it back up.. but will try that tonight...my thought is... as someone said..somethings lose or unseated, dirty, or there's a short.

Thanks....
Any other suggestions are apprciated.

BTW...
I'm running Win 98se on this machine. I have a copy of XP I havn't installed..so I think I'm going to just wipe the drive and put on XP when I get the new motherboard..Start everything fresh :-)

Maybe there is something more specific for your particular board but the following page gives the generic beep codes for the 3 main BIOS systems out there which should cover about 90% of all MB you can get

AMI, Phoenix and Award
http://www.pcmech.com/show/troubleshoot/14/1

Try turning off the PS and shorting the CMOS jumper in the "Clear CMOS" position then put it back again. Make sure that the cards are fully seated, particularly the AGP video card. If you have a soundblaster card remove it and DON'T put it back in. Try it now.

I had asked if you made any hardware changes prior to the onset of the problem. Did you? If you added memory, remove the most recent module and try it again.

As I mentioned earlier, the board is also fussy regarding heat, particularly with CPU heat. You must have a good quality fan and a thin coat of quality thermal paste between the fan and the CPU. The fan has to be turning without a huge dust buildup.

You can alternately try it with the case cover off and then with the whole thing set up on a foam or other insulating surface out of the case.

If someone else has a PS you can borrow, swap it out to rule out that problem. If you need a new PS there is a good deal right now from CircuitCity on an Antec "Smart Blue" 350 watt PS for $39.99 AR:

http://www.circuitcity.com/detail.jsp?c=1&b=g&qp=0&bookmark=bookmark_0&oid=80207&catoid=-11241

John

Thanks for the tips.. I will try them tonight when I get home.

Sorry I didnt answer your question before..no, there have been no new hardware or software installs. I have an ANTEC silent case I put in about 3 months ago. .. have ben running it with the cover off actually. Do you think that would effect the heat/dust issue ? Also... I don't beleve I have any 'paste' between the fan and cpu.

The Motherboard I just ordered is a MB/CPU combo and it does have paste.

I had a power supply go bad, and it would only kill the computer if I tried to do something processor-intensive, like capture video. It would boot fine, and load windows without problems, but if I tried to run any programs, It would freeze, and my ASUS MB would "say" something. It was real creepy, when I first heard it. I didn't know why everything crashed, and my computer was talking in this horrible voice. After I switched out the power supply, everything worked fine. Replacing a PS is a lot easier than dissecting your whole system, too.

Well, that's something to look into. The power supplu is fairly new.. came with the case when I got it a few months ago.

My power supply was less than a month old...It really made me nervous, since I had just built the system.

I ended up RMAing it to the manuf. through the place I bought it at, but bought a new one for 40 bucks (450 W, I think), as it took me about 6 months to get the RMAd PS back.

Power supplies fail much more often than motherboards. The switching power supply design is particularly hard on electrolytic capacitors. I've rebuilt half a dozen such power supplies, and usually find that one or two capacitors have failed completely, and most of the others are marginal.

I would, of course, not recommend trying to repair a computer power supply, since they are so cheap, and so easy to replace. I only do it with things like fax machines, VCRs, TVs, etc. where the power supply cannot easily be purchased and inserted into the chasis.

The fact that your system started showing some sign of life after removing a card makes it sound like the voltage is marginal. If you can get into your BIOS, one of the earlier posts suggested looking for a section of your BIOS that reports on power supply levels. Unfortunately, only a few BIOS provide such information, but if yours does, you should be able to tell what's up, without using a voltmeter (something you don't want to do if you aren't familiar with such things). As the earlier poster said, you want to have voltages very close to 5.0 volts and 12.0 volts. I think the BIOS will tell you the acceptable limits around these nominal values.

came with the motherboard (ASUS A7V8X) told me the voltage was low. That is how, without too much computer diagnostic experience, I was able to single the problem out without taking it in to get looked at.

I always keep that software running unless I am capturing or rendering. It has alarms that go off if any fans fail, the temp. gets too high, or if voltage starts to deteriorate.

If you have an Antec case, it probably came with an Antec PS so it probably isn't that. I would suspect the CPU is signalling the problem. Dismount the fan and apply a thin coat of silver paste and either replace the fan or reseat it. If it was a retail CPU, then it came with a fan so it should be covered by Intel and is probably OK so put it back on. Just make sure you have the fan headers plugged into the right fan sockets so it is being correctly monitored by the MB sensors as that can cause problems as well. Running the system with the case cover off is a good idea for now. Also try it with the soundcard removed and then on a benchtop out of the case. Sometimes the insulators and case don't work well together and allow shorts on the edges.

John