Turning on and off Computer!

[koinonas]

Ok Well, before u posted that i did actually went into the BIOS and it freezes most of the time when im in there

Is it freezing when your in the BIOS or just very slow and laggy (normal on some machines). If its actually freezing or crashing when your in the BIOS settings, then it CANNOT be a software issue.

and im trying to say the hard drive that was in the computer i took out and went to my other computer and took at that HARD DRIVE and put it in the one ive got problems with. and Yes both of them hard drives have WINDOWS XP on them just one had alot of viruses for more then 4 years. But the one i put in is old like 2000-20002

This isn't quite the best test. Even though they are both Windows XP installation, the "good installation" that you pulled out of your working computer to put into your problem computer may have incompatible drivers to run the hardware. This can result in all sorts of weird and wonderful behaviour. This is why I usually prefer running from a Retail Windows Installation disk as this has a generic set of drivers which should be able to run anything that it is possible to run on.

Plus i put in 2 RAM's one was a 256MB and one was a 512MB but when i took out the 256MB one and i clicked the power button it started making this beeping noise but when i put in the 256MB ram back in it never did the beeping noise.

Your line of thinking to isolating the issue is good with this approach. However should check some details.

1. Did you have two sticks or RAM installed. Say 256MB in slot 1 and 512MB in slot 2
2. And when you remove the 256MB from slot 1, but left the 512MB in slot 2 untouched the machine would not boot and kept beeping
3. issue with beeping went away when you reinstalled the 256MB in slot 1 (slot 2 is still untouched with 512MB)

If my understanding is as stated in the three points above, then this is expected behaviour and not an issue. Basically the beeping is most likely machine incorrectly failing the POST (Power On Self Test) most likely due to it thinking there is a memory fault. Most MOBO check RAM slots sequentially. So if no RAM is in slot 1, it thinks there's no RAM, reports a fault and doesn't check if anything is in slot 2.

As mentioned before I'm not a windows expert. But I would guess that you should be able to run a mem test off the Windows Install Disc. Also from memory, you might even be able to make a bootable floppy from the windows install disc (this allows you to boot to a command prompt and run a couple of basic tests which might include memtest).

 

[OsRevolution]

Just to let uno the problem was the ram i took out the 512mb and left it with the 256mb and its running good now reformated it installed new OS Windows XP pro and running all good but thinking i should go to 1gb ram

 

[OsRevolution]

bad news again had it running for one day straight then it froze then restarted and it kept turning back on and restarting and never reached desktop ever, what you think it could be it must be motherboard or power supply motherboard is MSI and power supply is a ATX 400w but both of them are like 3 or 4 years old