Continuous series of triple long beeps, no visual, fans spinning

[Marty9231]

Hi,

So I'm helping my friend build his PC, and we've got everything assembled correctly (at least we think we do). Only thing that is missing is a dvd-drive, which will arrive this week, but we figured that it wouldn't be needed to only boot the system into BIOS.

When we pressed the power button for the first time, the system did not boot and the motherboard (Asrock p67 pro 3) gave us a handy "Dr. Debug" message: '45'. We had no clue what it meant, so we googled it. We found a huge thread somewhere with someone saying that if you left only one stick of RAM in, in the farthest most slot from the CPU, it would boot just fine. Only it didn't and instead gave us the '38' debug code and still without visual input.

We only got error '38' if we put in one or both sticks in the WHITE slots, and the white slots only. If we put any ram in any blue slot, We just got the '45' error again.

We tried removing the ram, but that just gave us the 'missing ram' POST triple beep code.

In short:

Dual-channeled RAM in the blue slots: Dr. Debug code '45'
Single stick of RAM in any blue slot: Same story
Single or both sticks in any or both white slots: Dr. Debug code '38'
No RAM: Regular 'no RAM' triple error beeps.

We have no idea what to do next, and would appreciate some help.

Marty

 

[mailpup]

How certain are you that the RAM is compatible with the motherboard? What brand and model RAM are you using?

 

[Marty9231]

The memory is 2x2gb Kingston 1333Mhz DDR3. It's not really a specific type, the package says 'ECC CL9 dimm kit of 2'. Just realized I forgot to mention this in the first place.

 

[mailpup]

Your motherboard supports NON-ECC RAM. I think that may be your problem.

 

[Marty9231]

Does that also mean it does not support ECC RAM?

Because in that case we have been extremely sloppy about compatibility...

Thanks a ton anyway!

 

[Scott8090]

Yes, every day motherboards generally do not support ECC memory.

ECC memory is just memory with Error correcting.

You will want non-ECC memory, I would check the policies of the place you bought the memory from. They may work with you on exchanging, returning, something of like that.

 

[Marty9231]

Ok, thanks for the quick reactions of you both, we'll definetely pay more attention next time...

Marty