[Nightwish]

About a month ago, my computer start beeping at start up. Internal speaker not music listening speakers. During the Windows loading screen when the little bar at the bottom is going from left to right, it would freeze and my computer would go beep beep boooooooop beep beep boooooooop. It would do that a couple of times but then it would go back to normal and start up normally. The weird thing is it would only do this in the morning when I wake up like around 10-12. It would never beep/boop any other time.

But now, its gotten really bad. I play World of Warcraft and yesterday it started booping while I play. My game would freeze during the duration of the beep/boop and then go back to normal. I asked around and people told me that it might be overheating (but I doubt it), that its the harddrive messing up (doubt this too), that its a bad stick of RAM (which I believe), and that my video card is failing (which i believe too). So yesterday while waiting to go raid with my guild, I updated my video card. Thats when things really hit the crapper, I don't know if it was coincidence or if that was what caused my computer to finally give out on me, but I noticed that was the point of no return for my computer.

All of a sudden it started beeping and freezing more, and even when i alt tabbed out of WoW, the mouse would act all erratic. After my raid, I logged off WoW and tried to watch a video, but when I tried to open a WMV file, before I could even open it, right as i click it my screen started flashing and going all crazy. The screen would go black for 3 seconds, then come back and show my cursor split in 2, and showing a strange weird hand wherever I moved my cursor. It did this about 5 times then went back to normal. I thought to myself "that was weird" and then tried to click the video again but it did the flashing thing again (which is why i believe my video card failed on me). So I restarted my computer. It was at that point that I realized my computer had finally died or something. It beeped 11 times (i counted) and then at the windows loading screen, instead of staying there for 5 seconds, it stayed there for 2 minutes. and now EVERYTHING is slow. My World of Warcraft game is unplayable, even opening a web browser slows me down and my computer does that flashing thing if I open up a video.

I've checked all the beep codes that are on sites like http://www.sysopt.co...cle.php/3552501 but my beeps don't seem to have a pattern. Sometimes its 2 quiet beeps and a loud long beep. sometimes its short quick loud beeps, sometimes its 1 loud beep, sometimes its 1 quiet beep. I dunno.

I know that I'm probably gonna have to replace a lot of parts, or get a new computer, or whatever. Either way I kind of have the feeling that this isn't fixable, so I'm just posting this here for some kind of confirmation or explanation. If there was some way to fix it thatd be great, but I can already tell its not fixable. Possibly help me decided whether to try to get a new computer, or just replace the parts on this one.

But I think it is a bit understandable. For I've had this computer for almost 6 years now! and i know that most RAM won't even work for it now.
Its a Dell Dimension 4600 and it has 4 slots of RAM, but only 768 I have 2 256 and 2 128 (Don't ask, it came that way.) The Video Card is Nvidia GeForce FX 5200. Intel Pentium 4 CPU 2.40 GHz I know what most of you are gonna say, "Throw it out and get a new one"

I doubt theres anything that can be done, but like I said, I just want a sort of confirmation. I won't be able to buy a new computer for a while since I don't have any money and my father doesn't like me, or at least won't buy me another one.

The funny part is I have a laptop that I could play WoW on and it has better stats than this computer does, but it plays WoW worse than this computer because of freaking Vista taking up all the resource >_< gahh oh wellz I'll have to make do and raid tomorrow using my laptop lol.


If I've wasted your time I'm sorry, but thank you for listening and for giving me a chance to rant

Edited by Nightwish, 08 August 2007 - 12:06 PM.

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After hours of trial and error, I was finally able to locate the source of most of my problems.

Apparently the first of my four RAM slots is broken or somethng. Every RAM stick that I put into that slot would cause that irritating loud high pitched erratic eeee sound, but after putting 3 into the other 3 slots, nothing happened, it worked perfectly. And the reason that my videos were messing up, was because I updated my video card via device manager. Just now I went and downloaded the actual drivers from the Nvidia website, and fixed it. Now I can play videos.

The only problems I have now though, are that the Windows loading screen take much much longer than usual to load. It takes 2 minutes as opposed to 5 or 10 seconds before all of this happened. Also, after the windows screen goes away, its stuck on a black screen for like 20 seconds before it finally loads up the login page (which ends up laggy). But after that, everything works fine.
The only other problem I have is that now I only have 3 RAM slots.

Is there any way to fix a bad RAM slot or is it broken forever?

[Nightwish]

After hours of trial and error, I was finally able to locate the source of most of my problems.

Apparently the first of my four RAM slots is broken or somethng. Every RAM stick that I put into that slot would cause that irritating loud high pitched erratic eeee sound, but after putting 3 into the other 3 slots, nothing happened, it worked perfectly. And the reason that my videos were messing up, was because I updated my video card via device manager. Just now I went and downloaded the actual drivers from the Nvidia website, and fixed it. Now I can play videos.

The only problems I have now though, are that the Windows loading screen take much much longer than usual to load. It takes 2 minutes as opposed to 5 or 10 seconds before all of this happened. Also, after the windows screen goes away, its stuck on a black screen for like 20 seconds before it finally loads up the login page (which ends up laggy). But after that, everything works fine.
The only other problem I have is that now I only have 3 RAM slots.

Is there any way to fix a bad RAM slot or is it broken forever?

[w0lverine]

its basically gone forever. unless you know how to solder, then forget about it. but soldering only works if its the connection between the ram slot and the board. otherwise just get a new mobo.