Computer Issue - ONE LONG BEEP, No Video

[Cassandra]

My 15 year old son has an eMachines T2825 with the following specs:

CPU: AMD Athlon™ XP 2800+ Processor (2.083 GHz) with QuantiSpeed™ architecture
Operating System: Microsoft® Windows® XP Corporate Edition
Chipset: NVIDIA® nForce™2
Memory: 512 MB DDR (PC 2700)
Hard Drive: 120 GB HDD 2
Optical Drives: 48x Max. CD-RW Drive; 16x Max. DVD Drive; 3.5" 1.44MB FDD; 8-in-1 Media Reader(USB 2.0, Secure Digital (SD), Smart Media, Compact Flash, Memory Stick, Memory Stick PRO, Micro Drive, Multimedia Card)
Video: NVIDIA® GeForce4™ MX graphics
Sound: nForce™ 6-channel Audio
Network: D-link wireless Extreme G

He plays World of Warcraft heavily, and was having some trouble with lag. At the suggestion of a co-worker we upgraded his video card to an Apollo 6800 128 Geforce 6800 128MB DDR AGP 4X/8X Video Card for his birthday. For a while this seemed to help, but then he started noticing response issues again.

Much to my chagrin, he decided to open it up himself and attempt to switch back to his onboard video. He could not get the computer to work after that. I have since tried his old monitor with the onboard graphics (with the 6800 completely removed) and with the upgraded card as well. Since his monitor was old, I tried both conditions with another monitor that was known to work. I could get no video with either. I do get one long beep, a significant pause, then a repetition of the long beep and pause until I turn off the computer. I could find no reference to this pattern when I researched the POST beeps. Any ideas?

He is now wanting us to scavenge some from this pc and build him a new pc for Christmas, but of course I'd much rather salvage this one.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. I'm fairly technically competent, and built one pc about 4 years ago, but personal computers are not my strongest area.

Thanks!

 

[RealBlackStuff]

Tell your son to keep his dirty mitts off that PC if he does not know what he is doing (obviously!).
Put the 6800 card back in, you should get a signal again.
Then go into BIOS (hit the Del key a few times at startup) and activate the onboard graphics. Save the settings (F10 key) and switch the PC off. Remove the 6800.
Reboot in Safe Mode (hit the F8 key a few times at startup and select from the menu. You should have signal again, this time from the onboard graphics.
You now need to UNinstall the graphics drivers for that 6800 before you reboot into normal mode.
Once there, you need to RE-install the onboard-graphics drivers that came with the PC.

 

[JVCBlackDevil]

Most of the times if its just one long beep contentious its the RAM Modules. if you have 2 sticks of ram take out one and try it each time with each one. if theres only one stick of ram try using one you know works or go buy a new one.

 

[Fragrant Coit]

I agree, most likely RAM.

1st off, power off the machine, remove power cord, press the on button aa few times, then pull the side of the case off. Remove & replace the RAM - often there is a bad contact.

If that fails:

You can always run MemTest - create a bootable Floppy {or CD}, and boot from it - if you get errors, remove 1 stick {if you have 2 or more} and try again until you isolate the suss one.

http://www.memtest.org/#downiso

* Download - Pre-Compiled package for Floppy (DOS - Win) for floppy

Download - Pre-Compiled Bootable ISO (.zip) for CD

 

[Tedster]

https://www.techspot.com/vb/topic60398.html