graphics card - Computer goes to sleep, 1 long beep and 3 short beeps, won't wake up
2014-07
Jerry
Problem's basically what title says.
This happens most often when I'm playing graphically intensive games. My PC would go to sleep, beep - once long, three times short - and I'd be forced to manually reboot. I have recently installed CoreTemp which tells me that my CPU is often overheating. After some searching on the web I realize this might also be a graphics card problem. What should I do?
I have a Asus motherboard.
bitsmack
If an IC gets too hot, it will stop functioning. After it cools, it will often start working again. Eventually (sometimes even the first time), it will fail permanently.
If you know that your CPU and/or GPU is getting too hot, you should take care of that right away. Are the heat-sinks mounted correctly? Are the fans spinning? Are the ventilation paths in the case blocked with dust?
If you want to narrow it down, the beep codes can give you a hint as to what us wrong. They are bios-dependant, so if you know which brand bios your Asus is using (AMI, Phoenix, etc), you can search for "AMI BIOS POST codes" (for example). POST stands for Power-On Self Test.
Good luck :)
Meisner
Recently the following thing happened to my PC a couple of times:
Screen was as if covered with black and white stripes with a distinct square in the middle and the PC was not responding to input.
When the PC was rebooted it either was beeping with three long beeps or there was no beep at all.
Another weird thing was happening that may be related: from time to time when the PC was operational the buzzing continuous sound appeared on the AUX sound card output.
It also may be worth noting that both video card and sound card are integrated with motherboard.
Any ideas what could be done with that?
ChrisF
re-seat your RAM module(s)
8088
This wouldn't explain the beeps, but test the screen quickly on a different input to rule out any problems with that.
Next, the beeps! if the screen is fine and you are getting that output, it would mean that the motherboard is having problems. First step would be to remove everything, and just leave in power, one RAM (if you had more), nothing external apart from the screen and no hard drives. We are not trying to boot up, we are just trying to get past the BIOS.
If this works, gradually put items back one by one until you get another failure.
If it does not work, and you are still getting beeps, you most likely have a dead board. Check for capacitors that have blown
The top should be almost flat (with slight indents out embossed sections depending on specification... look at the middle one) but you do not want to see any big bumps such as the first one or any leakage as the last one.
If your pc is of the late P4 generation, there were MANY MANY boards that had this problem which lead to a lot of random failures as you are experiencing now.
harrymc
Three long beeps is really puzzling, since it's defined as keyboard card error. You may check your keyboard, but this doesn't explain the strips screen or the other funnies.
(see beep codes at http://www.computerhope.com/beep.htm)
If I were you, I would take the computer for professional checkup and repair (unless you're yourself a technician).
Gnoupi
What were you doing exactly when these things happened ?
I had it some times, and to me it was linked to graphical card. It happened in two cases :
- Graphical card heating too much. (most of the time this reason)
- Unplugging the power cord on my laptop, causing the graphical card to switch to a low-power mode, with reduced frequencies, for example. (happened like 2 times)
However, it was only a temporary thing, and passed with rebooting. (Even stranger, it was passing on the "Windows is preparing to close" screen.)