Emergency Help

You just put your new system together and hit the power button for the first time and the computer fails to post or boot up.  If your getting sirens, beeping sounds, or basically nothing but spinning fans, you obviously have something drastically wrong with you setup.  I will attempt to provide you with some of the most common problems and the fixes for them in this section.

Initial Testing

Probably the most important advice I can give to anyone putting together a new system is to save yourself a lot of heartache by initially setting up the motherboard outside of the case with the minimum components.  The reason I so strongly suggest an "Out of Case" test is the fact that a motherboard that is grounding out on something while in the case can cause just about any of the issues that we are going to discuss in this section.  Its very important that we rule out the case grounding issue from the start.  All you need for this "out of case" test is the CPU & Fan, Memory, Video Card, and a Floppy Drive.

Set your motherboard on a non conductive surface such as a basic piece of cardboard, hook up the basic devices as described.  If you can set your case close enough to your working area, plug the speaker into the motherboard so you can hear the "beep" when the motherboard posts.  Plug your power supply into the motherboard and use a flat blade screw driver to short the two "Power Switch" pins, this will start the system.  If you hear the post beep then you know from the start that you motherboard is more than likely in good working condition.  If it does not post, then you have certainly saved yourself the time and hassle of removing a bunch of parts from your case while the troubleshooting begins.  If your system will not post with it outside of the case, we now have only a limited amount of components that we need to troubleshoot and hopefully remedy.

Lets go over some of the most common problems and what could be causing them.  Lets assume that the system is being set up outside the case as we troubleshoot these problems.

1.  "Turning on the power only gets spinning fans, nothing from the video, and system wont post."  This issue is more than likely caused by an inadequate power supply unit.  If you have a generic power supply that came with your fancy new $50.00 case, I can almost assure you the power supply is not up to the job.  I have read countless accounts of this problem and almost always when the person is asked about the power supply they are using, they usually respond, "I don't know, its whatever came with this case".  It does not really matter if its a high wattage power supply either, as the wattage means nothing when it comes to quality.  What your after are stable voltages, the better power supplies such as the ones described in the "Recommended Hardware" section of this site, have what are called isolated voltage rails. This means that there is separate circuitry built in to the power supply that produce each voltage rail, each independent of the other. Most lower end and generic power supplies do not have this feature, all the voltage rails come from a common source via simple voltage dividing circuits.

Other possible causes of this problem are:
    A) Bad signal from CPU fan to motherboard fan connector.
    B) Dead video card.
    C) Incorrectly installed floppy drive cable.
    D) Motherboard grounding out on the case (But you don't have in the case yet, right??)

2. "When I start the system I hear loud two tone sirens".   More than likely this problem is due to one of two things, either a improperly installed heatsink and fan allowing the processor to overheat, or the motherboard not getting a RPM reading from the CPU fan.  Check to make sure the heatsink is installed correctly with step on the heatsink matching the step on the CPU socket.  Its easy to install a heatsink backwards and I've seen it happen many times.  Double check that you used thermal compound between the CPU core and the heatsink, and that it is applied correctly. 

Make sure your cpu fan is connected to a power source and that it is spinning.  There is a cpu power header on the motherboard that will read the RPM of this fan when connected.  You can also disable the motherboard from reading this fan in the BIOS.  Under the "PC Health Status" section of bios, disable "Shut Down When CPUFAN Fail".  You may have to do this if you have your fan is connected directly to a power supply lead.  Disabling it in BIOS will keep the alarm from sounding in some cases.  If it does not cure your problem then you may just plug a case fan into the cpu power header so BIOS has something to read.

3.  "When I start my computer I get beeping sounds".  These are called beep codes, and they mean something specific related to your hardware.  Different beep patterns will indicate a problem with a specific piece of hardware.  Below is a list of the beep codes and what they mean:

One beep - board is working fine.

One long beep then machine shuts down - faulty, improperly installed or missing CPU.

1 short(Beep) - System booting is normally.

2 short(Beep) - CMOS setting error.

1 long - 1 short(Beep) - DRAM ERROR.

1 long - 2 short(Beep) - Display card or monitor connected error.

1 long - 3 short(Beep) - Keyboard Error.

1 long - 9 short(Beep) - ROM Error.

Long(Beep) continuous - DRAM isn't inserted correctly.

Short(Beep) continuous - POWER supply has a problem.

A two-tone siren - generally caused by overheating or out of specification voltages.

4.  "I just flashed my BIOS and now my computer will not boot".  The first thing you should try is clearing your CMOS via the jumper on the motherboard, in fact this should always be done when you flash the BIOS.  If this does not work then you have probably flashed your BIOS with the incorrect version.  There have been literally hundreds of people who flashed their motherboard with the wrong BIOS version.  The version 2 NF7's use a different BIOS than the Ver 1.XX boards.  If you flash with a BIOS intended for for a different version than you have, you have rendered your board inoperable.  There are a couple things you can do if this has happened to you.  If you have another system or know someone with a system that uses the same BIOS chip as your motherboard you can do a hot flash.  This entails removing you BIOS chip and inserting it into a running motherboard and flashing it from Windows.  The best scenario for this would be to find someone with another NF7 series motherboard, start their system up and while its running remove their BIOS chip, insert yours and reflash it with the correct BIOS version.  Turn the computer off and remove your chip and replace theirs.  If your not up to this task or do not have access to another machine, you can purchase a pre-programmed BIOS chip at www.excaliberpc.com.