nico-t

Extra ram added besides the old ram. The extra ram was exactly the same as the old, so this is not the problem.

Started up the pc and it doesnt work anymore. Light goes on, but thats it.

So i removed the new ram, so now the only ram in it is the old one i have used for many years.

Started up the pc, and still just the light on but not starting up! What the fuck is this? I just put new ram in it and removed it again. And now its completely dead? What is causing this?

Yngwie

Remove the cmos battery, put it back in, reboot. See if that helps anything.

If possible, try the new ram in another pc to see if the ram actually work.

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Oracle Porn

you fucked up your motherboard, happens, actually happened to me too.

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signupdamnit

Could be the first two replies but also double check to make sure you didn't knock a connector loose somewhere or perhaps an adjacent memory module. Happens all the time.

Zuzana Designs

I just went through this with one of my pc's. It ended up being the mother board and I bought a new pc cause I didn't have time to mess with it. Do you get any beeps when you start the pc with no ram in it?

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nico-t

jesus christ. How did i fuck up the motherboard? And without ram it doesnt gives any beeps. It does nothing, with or without ram.
Fans spin though. But thats it.

Zuzana Designs

Can you open your cd rom? You may not have grounded yourself when you messed with the ram. My fan was working but the board would not get hot at all and the cd/dvd roms would not open. I had no beep codes or monitors either.

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u-Bob

no beeps? either something's disconnected or the motherboard's gone.

nico-t

exactly the same here. And i did ground myself before replacing it etc. Read about it before i did the upgrade. Well, downgrade now obviously.

what a fucking headache this is. Is there any way to fix this at all? I really dont feel like putting every program, every little thing i use on another pc. This had everything i need on it...

u-Bob

did you disconnect the power cord before you put in the ram?

nico-t

yes

by the way, the little green light on the motherboard is still on... does that mean the mobo isnt fried?

quiet

damn that sucks dude.

Zuzana Designs

It sucks so bad when this happens Sorry it happened to you. I took mine into a couple PC places in Tennessee while I was visiting my parents and they all told me the same thing. I would have to replace the MB and there was a possibility the processor could have gone as well. By the time I could order the parts and have them put in I was headed back to North Carolina. I just ended up buying a new pc cause I was sick of dealing with my old one. I just built it less than 6 months ago too. I don’t think there is any way to recover the programs unfortunately. You can swap your HD into a new pc and use it as the slave to keep the data but the programs are tough to recover cause of the registry files.

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Zuzana Designs

Yea my light was still on as well.

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grumpy

green light means it gets power, nothing else

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Babaganoosh

Try with one stick of RAM. First pull power, remove the CMOS battery and try to power on.

Also, you were wearing a static strap, right?

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nico-t

thanks for clearing it up people... ill be shopping for a new one then. This thing is old anyway. FUCK!!!

u-Bob

You simply put the HD in a new pc and boot it up. Everything will be there.

nico-t

no, i didnt even know what that is until now (google images). Tried it without battery still no startup

nico-t

ive got 2 physical HD's, 1 is the c (windows) and d drive (partitioned) and one is with alot of files, my huge music collection etc.
So if i get a new pc and replace that c drive with this one, i will be able to use it like nothing happened? That would be perfect.

Babaganoosh

I meant pull the power cord, pull the battery and without hooking power back up try to turn on the computer. The capacitors are still holding a little charge that can prevent the BIOS from being reset.

There's also usually a reset jumper on a mobo that you can move over to the reset position and briefly power up.

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cykoe6

This is the most likely answer.

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signupdamnit

If it's really old did the PC speaker ever recently work? Sometimes they go bad and that could explain no beeps with no RAM (and it usually won't POST with no RAM anyway depending on the computer). For the hell of it I'd probably try blowing compressed air in the area of the ram slots (to unseat and pickup any dust) then putting in the old RAM module. After that I'd say screw it and get a new one if I already tried the other stuff people mentioned.

Zuzana Designs

For some reason I could not get my programs and had to reload them all

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Babaganoosh

You won't be able to just slap in the old drive with the OS and expect it to boot up. You'll have to install windows again but if you drop your existing drives into a computer that is already running windows you MAY be able to use the programs installed on it without reinstalling.

Either way your data will be safe though, don't sweat that.

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fusionx

Maybe I'm missing something - he should be able to boot up just fine. He'll need to reset the BIOS on the new box, then install the correct motherboard drivers (and other hardware of course), but it should boot, as long as he adds the drive with the active boot partition in the correct location on the bus.

nico-t

tried everything now. Also the no power cord trick but that didnt do anything. Looks like its fucked. Nice.

Babaganoosh

Sure, you can go through all that and make it work. I was assuming it was over his head though.

You never know what you might run into. I just had to install windows on an older computer that had no driver disks with it. The regular Win XP disk didn't have the appropriate driver for the disk controller so I couldn't even begin to install Windows. To top it off it was a Soyo motherboard and Soyo is gone. I had to search old repair forums for over an hour to find a working download for that driver.

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Ron Bennett

Make sure the old RAM is seated in their sockets all the way; perhaps one or more of them came loose while you were putting in the new RAM.

The number of beeps is an indication of what's wrong. How many beeps are you hearing? Google BIOS beeps for explanation of what the various beep sequences possibly mean.

Also, another thing to try is take out the old RAM and put in the new RAM only - see if that works.

It's possible the timing of the new chips is different than that of the old and the CMOS is confused - hence, the suggestions by some to take out the CMOS battery. But don't do that yet - try the new RAM by itself first. If that works, then use the new RAM only, and buy more that's the same brand from the same supplier to add to it.

Ron

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Ron Bennett

Addendum:

What kind of RAM did you remove? And what kind did you buy?

DDR2 DDR3, etc? ... memory size? ... what brand? ... and ram timing / speed?

Knowing that might help narrow down the issue.

If you do remove the CMOS battery - first try the new ram by itself, but if no good (I neglected to mention this), try the old ram by itself.

Ron

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Barefootsies

Yep, same here.

Had a machine that mirrored that O.P. exactly. I could never put more than a 2GB RAM stick into the boxe despite it being able to hold 8GB because MOBO was fucked. Since it was some secondary server, it was not worth the hassle to screw around with it to fix.

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Overload

dang! without any memosticks the box shud respond with a fast beep-beep-beep to point out the memo is missing ... not a single sound on boot means you killed it

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u-Bob

you probably used the OS that was preinstalled on the new pc to boot?

u-Bob

old drive with OS in a new pc = works fine... Done it dozens of times. The windows install will detect the different hardware (other grafix card and things like that) and you may need to install some drivers afterwards to get better performance, but it will work.


That doesn't make any sense. The OS is installed on the HD. If you take a HD with one OS out of the box and put another HD with another OS on it in the box, the box has no way of knowing that.

moeloubani

Switch the hard drive into a new PC and it'll boot up like normal except it'll be faster and it'll be new but all your software will be there just like it was on your old one.

CYF

definitely sounds like you killed the motherboard. That sucks.

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nico-t

thanks for clearing it up u-bob and moeloubani. Will do that for sure

Zuzana Designs

I guess that's what I did I wish I would have asked GFY before I had to reinstall all my programs. I asked the guy at the local pc shop here if it would work and he told me I could only recover the data Boo Hoo

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cess

That doesn't always work, sometimes windows won't boot because of old hard drive controller drivers installed. The only way to make sure it will boot is to replace a few drivers with generic ones first but it's too late for the OP to do that.

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put it in the oven. get drunk.

nico-t

i put my old hd's in the new one, starting up gets me the start in safe mode selection screen. Whatever option i select it reboots.

Put in an xp cd (the cd from the xp ive got on the old hd is gone) and it doesnt do anything with it when i boot from cd.
Put in an xp boot disk and it also doesnt do anything.

Now what?

iSpyCams

Here's my input from many years of repairing thousands of computers:

Regarding putting the old drive in a new machine:

Sometimes putting the old drive in a new PC works and sometimes it doesn't.

It all depends what drivers from the old configuration are compatible with the new one. If enough of your old drivers are compatible with the new system to get the machine up and running enough to install the needed drivers to take you to 100% then you'll be fine. (remember to try booting in safe mode)

If not you will need to reinstall your OS.

Alternatively you could take the opportunity to get a squeaky clean new OS install going on and put your old drives in as additional ones, initially to pull you old data from and moving forward as extra storage.

Or even buy an external USB case so you can have easy access to any data you may need from them.

As far as the mobo not working, before you write it off, look very carefully with good lighting and make sure there is no dust or other crap present in the memory slots, also make triple sure any memory modules you inserted are inserted properly and completely.

Look under the mobo, between the mobo and the case and see if any screws or springs rolled in there.

Test each Dimm one by one, then two by two in every different slot and every combo you can think of. Do this patiently and carefully.

iSpyCams

Try hitting f8 repeatedly during the post process, this will most likely get you to a "start in safe mode" option.

Once booted in safe mode, check your device manager for drivers that need attention, ignore the graphics till everything else is taken care of.

XP may not be able to deal with all the devices on a new machine automatically, it would be a good idea to go to the manufacturer's website on a second PC (assuming networking is not working yet) and download any needed drivers to a USB stick and use that to get them onto the new machine.

iSpyCams

When it reboots, does it seem intentional? Like it's getting ready to restart in safe mode? or is it just freaking out and resetting?

If the latter it's time for a clean OS Install. Your drivers from your old system are simply not prepared to deal with the new hardware.

It's like if someone surgically removed your brain and put it in an octopus. You would have no idea how to control that body because its too different from yours.

Yes I realise that is a flawed analogy.

RazorSharpe

But you'd be able to predict football (soccer) score and can legally change your name to Paul .....

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nico-t

it detected the xp cd, but now it hasnt detected that windows xp is already on it. I selected the partition where xp is on, and now it looks like its doing a completely new installation on that same partition? it doesnt even give the 'repair'option. wtf. This is going really great.

nico-t

now i have my original windows in c:/WINDOWS and the new one in c:/WINDOWS.0

Selection screen at start of booting the pc with 2 xp's. When i select the old xp it reboots (doesnt work).
The new xp works but doesnt have all the programs installed.

Can i migrate the new one with the old? Or can i repair the old windows from within the new windows? Help is really appreciated.

Juicy D. Links

DamianJ

Really? I thought most installations of XP read your mind, knew what applications you wanted, went and downloaded them, installed them and then wiped your arse afterwards.

nico-t

read the thread genius