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[Mr Chug]

So, I'm stomping the english as the welsh on mediaeval 2 when suddenly the game crashes, complete with horrible sound of the last half a second of audio on loop. One press of the reset button later and even though it reboots I've got nothing on the screen and the monitor goes into power saving mode, implying it's not getting any signal from the pc. Last time this happened it was a motherboard issue, with the bios not even posting at all, but this time I can hear the bios posting and the hard drive clicking away, so I don't think it's the same issue (and with all new motherboard/processor/ram, it better not be).

Any ideas? My best guess is that it's a graphics card issue, since the monitor output comes from that and the crash happened while in a game. This is backed up by the fact that the card's fan didn't seem to be working when I had the case open- after I span it around a bit and knocked off some dust it span happily, but the damage has likely been done. The other anomaly is that the hard drive light on the front isn't flashing, but a) it wouldn't be the first time and b) I don't see how that would stop it displaying anything. Also, I've tried resetting the bios by removing the battery, but no luck there.

[claws]

Does sound like graphics card (no built-in one you can test it with?). Always worth reseating everything if you haven't already.

[Millicent Bystander]

Sounds like the graphics card to me, especially if you can hear the PC bleeping.

I don't suppose you have a built in graphics chip or a PC you can "borrow" a graphics card from to test.

[Magathery]

Agree with the above disgnosis. Bad luck fella

[Sk1nn3d]

When testing with the on baord graphix and it is still blank remember to reset the bios config maunally!

[Mr Chug]

No onboard graphics unfortunately, graphics card is the only thing with a monitor output on (two in fact, neither of which work). Guess I'll try reseating it today, and borrow my friend's when he's back tomorrow if that doesn't work. Really wish this hadn't popped up two weeks before i40

Edit: no joy with reseating. Guess it's a case of trying  another and if that doesn't work, panicking.

[Tommy the Cat]

Similar happened to me, solved by blowing all the shit out of the fan on the GFX card. Or your GFX card might of died, overheat would be my guess.

[r007]

So your crash sounds like a faulty interrupt halting the system (the sound card then goes on reading its ringbuffer, which produces the looped last X seconds). That might very well have been caused by your card dying that very instant. (Did you notice any graphics glitches? Those might hint at overheating.)

Good luck getting the other card to work. What type of card is it? PCIE? Nvidia?

[Millicent Bystander]

I have vague memories of reading somewhere about M2TW buggering up graphics cards.  If your graphics card is buggered I have a 256mb Radeon 3850 PCI E spare.  That should run TF2 and M2TW at high settings depending on your system.

[Mr Chug]

So, tried replacing the graphics card but no joy- still not showing anything on screen. Some other points we noticed:
- bios actually beeps twice, the second after a bit of a delay; I think my bios is ami, so assuming the first beep is the post and the second is the beep code, that apparently corresponds to a failed interrupt timer/controller, which would agree with r007.
- my keyboard and mouse lights don't come on after their initial flash, which implies it's definitely not making it to windows
- everything seems to have power, and reseating pretty much everything hasn't helped

[Magathery]

Might be worth poping out the BIOS battery to clear everything down to defaults. Remove battery. Count to four. Put battery back in. Turn on computer. Hope and pray screen comes back to life. Hopefully rejoice and enter BIOS and set up time, date and other things.

Good luck fella.

PS: Disconnect your hard drives, both power and data. May stop them getting inadvertantly corupted or something while your trying this out. What with all the powering on and off. In essance try the BIOS battery thing with only graphics card, a single stick of RAM and a keyboard in. You don't need all your periferals plugged in and may help identify if it's another bit of kit that is causing the boot problem. Had a wierd problem about 5 years ago where I had an upgread on the motherboard, RAM and proccessor but couldn't get it to work. Boot up would hang very early in POST. Took the PC to Earthy who eventually found the problem to with with the CD-RW hanging the boot up. Don't you just love computers.

[Sk1nn3d]

Found a bit for various BIOS beeps:

http://forums.devshed.com/showpost.php?p=856224&postcount=3

[Mr Chug]

Right, update:
- Tried the Bios battery method as described and got the same thing as usual
- Since the beep code supposedly points to a ram issue, tried each stick individually in every slot. No change every time.
- As far as I can see, this leaves either a mobo issue or a processor issue. Problem is I don't know how to tell.

[Magathery]

Well that screws the pooch a bit.

Sorry to hear that your still having fun & games with this

Total long shot - Turn on the PC with no RAM in it at all. I think it should still go through POST, but fail the RAM test kind of thing. Working on a best guess I'd say the motherboard is more likely to die than the processor. So this is usually the part of the post where I say things like "Do you know of anyone willing to let you test your processor / RAM / Graphics card in their rig?"

Disclaimer: Today my Yin has been way out of harmony with my Yang. So trust me when I say you would do well to totaly ignor all I say / post. Well than normal at any rate.

Good luck.

[r007]

Then we would have to know what socket, ram and processor you have, so we can dig our scavenge heaps for matching material.