Not booting after two weeks.

[tatfam]

Hi,

I built my first computer with following spec :-
MOBO - DG965SS
Memory - Kingstorn 2*1GB 1.8V, DDR2 PC5300
Case - Antec Sonata II with 450W PSU
HDD - Seagate 400GB SATA
DVD Burner - Lite-on SATA

No video cards installed.

The system worked perfectly for two weeks..it was running 6-8hrs average everyday.

Yesterday it booted and I was able to work. Then I left machine "on" returned after 1 hr. I saw monitor is not getting output (green linght is blinking instead of steady green). also I checked my Optical mouse is not glowing and and keyboard.

I checked the cable connections and all looked good. By using power button I restarted the machine. I saw scanning lines on the monitor on BIOS screen and later Windows screen but windows never booted and system is hung.

Did few of times reboot again with power switch. I also observerd that sometime system hangs on BIOS screen again with scanning lines.

Now I don't even see any output on the monitor even the BIOS is not coming on the screen. Sometime it give 3 beeps on start but many times it is not giving beeps on restart. I opened the case and see 120 mm and CPU fan are spinning.

I also observed couple of time machine switched off automatically just after may be 2-3 secs.

I would appreciate if anybody can help me narrowing down the problem with above my observations.

Thanks

[tatfam]

I forgot to write CPU. It is Core2Duo 4400

[tatfam]

Also, there is no issue with the monitor. I connect the monitor to my old machine and it works perfectly.

[The Wise Monkey]

Try taking out all the components until it is the bare minimum to boot i.e. motherboard and one stick of RAM. If this works, start adding the other components back in until it stops again. This means that you can identify what the problem might be more easily.

[tatfam]

Hi,

Thank you very much for your response. Looks it is loose contact in one RAM.

Process:-
1) I removed one RAM and machine booted.
2) I removed the other only RAM and put the RAM of above step#1. Machine booted.
3) I put both RAMs, the machine booted.

so concluding RAM contact issue. There is also a basis for this too :-
my son changed the location of the box probably while keeping it down he might have done little harder which caused this contact issue..probably in my first connection I might not have pressed RAM tightly.

In any case the problem symptoms were very weird, scary and interesting with scanning lines on the monitor, freezing of BIOS screens and keyboard and mouse..

Thanks again.

[The Wise Monkey]

No worries - glad you figured it out. :)