Too many beeps from the motherboard!

[FeetofClay]

Can anyone help me its driving me crazy.

Abit NF7-S rev 1.2
AXP 1800
2x512 generic PC2700
450w PSupply
Radeon 9800
XP Home
2xstandard IDE HDD

Has been working like a dream for over a year.
Out of the blue I start getting beep codes from the board, often 2 short followed by at least 6 sometimes more and then lockup of Windows. This usually starts after about half an hour of PC being on and is preceded by a noise of the hard drive being polled quite loudly.

First thing I did was update the BIOS to the latest version, something I had been meaning to do anyway - no change.

I know 2 short beeps mean a CMOS setting error so I reset to fail safe defaults and (after getting bloody XP re-registered) still no change.

I have left the pc in the bios to check the CPU temp and it stayed at about 40 degrees after a short time I got the beeps again.

I have also swapped the ram around and reseated the graphics card.

At times I would not get past the POST with one of the following errors but a reboot would get me in OK.

CPU is missing or unworkable
Detecting IDE drives....

Any ideas gratefully accepted

 

[Shrapnill]

Your Abit NF7 user manual should have a section on CMOS beep codes...

 

[killians45]

try reseating the processor

 

[killians45]

hmmm... according to this http://www.ocforums.com/archive/thread/218664-1.html

maybe power supply issue... which, I GUESS could cause faulty bios setup, too... but short beeps over and over show power supply problem and 2 short beeps are invalid cmos settings.

 

[jaksback]

sounds like your processor has been overheating. did u overclock it?

 

[killians45]

also if anything was just flashed make sure the bios setting for the processor is correct, and you're not underclocked.

 

[FeetofClay]

Hmm well the plot thickens...

I tried another power supply last night but it was just the same so I think we can rule that out.
I then had a hunch (mainly cause of this disk pollng sound before the beeps start) and unplugged my dvd-rom, cdrw and slave ide drive leaving only my master hard drive in the first ide channel. Booted and all was well - left it on for over 2 hours with no problem! I then plugged the dvd back into ide2 and again all seems to be well.

The only thing that is screwed is the network connection - green light is on but the nvidia network device does not show anywhere and hence no lan connection but I can only think this must be unrelated.....i reloaded the latest driver bundle which includes network device but no joy. I will just throw a network card in to get around this irritation but has anyone had their network device just dissappear?

My next step is to plug in the other 2 ide devices one at a time and see when it starts complaining.

Has anyone heard of beeps denoting a problem with an IDE device or is this just another bizarre instance in my mad little world of hardware :roll:

(in answer to your suggestions - many thanks folks - I may rebuild the damn thing and splash out on some proper RAM but I hate reseating the processor I always break out in a cold sweat thinking im gonna break it and I'm a bit skint)

 

[jaksback]

Yes I have had the computer do some real weird s@#% such as beeps etc. and I figured out that I had jumpers set wrong on the back of my hard drives. But I'm sure it's nothing so simple as that dor you.

 

[FeetofClay]

Well it was simple ...or so it seems...I have just left my old CDRW drive unplugged and all is well.
It is about 5 years old and writes at about 2x speed so methinks tis time for a shiny new one

cheers all