PC was working fine, suddenly no video..

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Wyluli

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I have an old pentium 450 PC with a voodoo3 video card in the AGP slot. I was replacing the SOUND card in the case and when I rebooted, I suddenly lost my video. The machine makes one long beep followed by two short beeps. It obviously boots up, but doesn't do me much good since I can't see anything. Once the machine boots up, it immediately shuts off by itself.
What do you think the problem is?

Thanks.
 
The pc was built by a local guy for me. I believe most of the parts are old Gateway POS (POS=Piece of S***).
It has a Pentium II 450 processor attached to it. Sorry I can't specify the board as there is no info on it, but I'm willing to bet it's a gateway so who knows who actually made the board.
 
Well the beeps are telling you what's wrong with your machine basically. You really need a manual or mobo manufacturers website in order to retrieve information on Beep codes. What is your BIOS? Go into the BIOS and the type of BIOS you have will be at the top.

Here's a page of common beep codes.

http://www.helpwithpcs.com/upgrading/post-beep-codes.htm

The one you described is:
AWARD BIOS ERROR BEEP CODES

There are 2 main beep codes for the Award BIOS:
one long beep and two short beeps - Video error (reseat or replace video card)
two short beeps - Non-Fatal Error (reseat RAM, check other components)
 
Nubius

Thanks for the info. I figured that was a code of sorts, but without video I can't go in and see what type of Bios I have. It's tricky that way.

I'm going to go dust the machine, pull out the video and Ram and reseat them. I'll pull the sound card out too and leave it out to see if it will boot up ok. I'll let you guys know what happens.
 
Ok, here's an update.
I found a chip on the motherboard: SMSC Phoenix 1996 MK421 so I guess it is a Phoenix Bios.

I pulled all the cards out of the machine and both sticks of RAM. Blew it out the best I could to remove dust.
Put only ONE stick of RAM back in (bank 0) and the video card. I then booted her up. I got the same one long beep followed by two short beeps.
I figure this narrows it down to either bad video card, bad ram, or bad motherboard. That's all it could be right?
Unfortunately, I don't have another video card to try out in it. :-(
 
Wow, found this on the Phoenix bios website:
Beep Codes
The only AwardBIOS beep code indicates that a video error has occurred and the BIOS cannot initialize the video screen to display any additional information. This beep code consists of a single long beep followed by two short beeps

BOY...Now that I know there is a video problem...errr, wait a minute, the fact that there IS NO video gave me that clue!
 
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