Andrew O'Brien wrote: > Please excuse the non-ham question but hopefully folks here will have > an idea or two. > > > One of my household PCs (not the ham PC thankfully) was dropped > during a move to another room. Out spilled the memory cards, > wireless PCI card, and the CPU heatsink fan. After reinstalling I > get the PC to briefly boot up and then it shuts it's self down. The > shutdown is too quick to get a any beep codes, the first couple of > attempts I heard a European siren-type noise for a few seconds. > Anyone here have any guesses what the issue would be?
Andy, I would check the memories for integrity, perhaps in another compatible computer. Also, I would check the beep codes to understand what the siren means. > I wonder about CPU overheating but the fan snapped nicely back in to > place and the fan appears to work fine. Any chance the bang to the > PC would cause the CPU heatsink to lose a seal with the CPU? I have > not taken the CPU heatsink off yet, it looks firmly in place and > apart from some dust in the heatsink fins, it looks OK. Make sure it is firmly seated. What it takes is thermal grease, like any semiconductor device attached to a heat sink. My P4 came with a square of something like "chewing gum" which is thermal compound and goes between the microprocessor and the heatsink. I have always judged a good thermal contact by the stickyness of the heatsink. If you have to pull it with a bit of force after the locks are released, there is a good contact. The thermal compound fills the small voids in the mating surfaces and when you pull it, it creates a bit of vacuum. You should have some temperature indication on a setup tab. Check that the core temperature is not excessive. > On the most recent attempt I took one of the memory sticks out and > the PC boot-up lasted long enough to tell me that the "firmware had > detected a change in memory configuration". That is certainly a positive sign. > Then I briefly got the flashed message about pressing a F -Key if I > wanted to access the BIOS. Then it closed down. I am taking that as a > sign the hardrive was briefly accessed. That looks like overheating. Make sure the CPU is making good contact to the heat sink. Leave just one memory stick to boot. You could even test it with no disk, the boot process would stop when it finds no bootable device, and should not shut down by itself. Check the performance of the motherboard with a diagnostic program, like Aida32 or Everest. There may be some loose contact due to the impact. Check memory sockets with a previously checked good memory. The impact may have damaged a printed circuit board line and make a good memory lok bad. If the memory modules pass the test, plug all in their places and make sure all are well seated. > I am wondering if one would get similar symptoms if the power supply > was somehow damaged during the fall ? There is a possibility. Check the voltages in the corresponding setup tab, or with a digital VOM. You should have stable +5 and +12V on the disks power connector. 5 volts should be OK between 4.75 and 5.25 V, but usually the error will be much less, from 4.9 to 5.1 V 73, Jose, CO2JA
