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1 Long Beep: Memory problem
Explanation: There is a failure of some sort related to the system memory.
Diagnosis: The first bank of memory probably has a failure of some sort; this is usually just a physical problem such as an incorrectly inserted module, but may also mean a bad memory chip in a module. It is possible that there is a failure related to the motherboard or a system device as well.
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Interesting ...
I swear to God, if the RAM is just loose or something I'll kick the bloody thing in ...
Keep us up to date!! 
I did that with my Bios at Christmas for the same reason - graphics card went strange. Turned out it needed a bit of a clean, but too late i'd flashed the Bios and it hung.
In the end I got a new computer. 
Hmm, nasty....
Without knowing Socket type, CPU and so forth, I can't really suggest a replacement motherboard...
But IMO a replacement mobo is probably your best bet.
A motherboard with a screwed BIOS flash is a sad and lonely thing, rescuing it usually comes in one of three flavours.
1) the motherboard already came with a second BIOS EEPROM in case of accidents like this. You flick a jumper and once again have a functional PC. Doesn't seem to apply in this case.
2) The BIOS is in a DIL package and you send away fr a replacement BIOR ROM, swap them over and pray it works.
3) It all gets technical and expensive, and it almost certainly works out cheaper to buy a new suitable motherboard.
Oh, and you left out all the swearing that was no doubt involved, MBar :P
You have my commiserations MBar, my previous PC died in a cloud of magic blue smoke when a MOSFET on the pump control board of the watercooling system I had at the time died. It's not nice to lose a PC when you're as hopelessly addicted as some 
Warning:
The above post may contain Cynicism, sarcasm and/or pessimism. If you object to the quantities contained, then tough.
Thanks for the pointer, guys. An I've made progress. 
It's kinda the memory. But not really.
Long story short, I've three RAM slots, if more than the first one is occupied, computer doesn't boot. Otherwise, it's all fine. Which means I'm up and running, all be it with 512mb memory.
City of Villians on 512mb RAM? Urk ...
It's still the motherboard's fault, i.e. Evesham's fault. Motherboard atm is a MSI K8N Neo Platinum (Model No. 7030), which is a Socket 754, other details here .
If you decide to go for a higher capacity stick let me know mate - I'll see what I can do. Send me an email and I'll see if I can help out at all.
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If you decide to go for a higher capacity stick let me know mate - I'll see what I can do. Send me an email and I'll see if I can help out at all.
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Thanks, mate.
Been doing some more research, and I've cobbled together various reasons why the memory slots may be on the fritz. Memtest, Timings, DDR Voltage etc. will all be checked tonight when I get home.
Well, thats it, she's basically kaput now.
Tried re-flashing the BIOS with the old version and now it's buggered completely. Time for a new motherboard!
But, I'm thinking of not stopping there. A new system (with additional recycled components) is very possibly on the cards.
That of course mean my absence from CoX is guarenteed to be somewhat lengthy. But, I'll no doubt still be hanging around the boards and junk.
Thanks to the DarkWings and everyone else I've played with up until this point. This isn't "Goodbye", it's "See you in a while."
Oh, and Happy Birthday, Mr. Jet!
Shame to hear that mate. Let me know if I can help at all. Oh, and thanks for the felicitation!
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Thanks to the DarkWings and everyone else I've played with up until this point. This isn't "Goodbye", it's "See you in a while."
Oh, and Happy Birthday, Mr. Jet!
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If it's any consolation, I can't see myself playing Toybox until they fix a few issues (the main one at the moment stopping me playing is the immob/KB autofail on stop x from escaping missions. Which is irritating as Immob and KB is about all Toybox does, and I can't really stop my pets from doing KB... ***)
Of course the fact that the mission in question that's stalling me right now is full of nothing but Longbow Spec Ops.... (Limited to one per spawn? Yea Verily Bollards! 
)
This of course means that by the time you get back, Seethe may once again have roughly equivalent level fire support available.
Ah well, good luck resurrecting your pc, but bear in mind you could replace just the Motherboard for about £40-£50 and have a functional pc again sooner than it takes to save up for a more comprehensive system upgrade...
:edit: *** - Yes, I could just fail the mission and move one, but that goes against the grain.... I don't fail missions if I've got any say in the matter.
Warning:
The above post may contain Cynicism, sarcasm and/or pessimism. If you object to the quantities contained, then tough.
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Ah well, good luck resurrecting your pc, but bear in mind you could replace just the Motherboard for about £40-£50 and have a functional pc again sooner than it takes to save up for a more comprehensive system upgrade...
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Yup, am thinking about just replacing the board. The only things that are stopping me are the facts that:
1. New graphics card may still not function fully
2. BIOS update may yet again bugger it up
I happen to have a PCI-E graphics card from a previous experiement, so maybe a new Socket 754 board with PCI-E slots would solve both problems.
To the Internet! Objective: research!
Mbar,
Having recently upgraded my box with a variety of new bits, i may be in a position to help you sort your rig and cheaply. I had some nightmarish problems with a DFI Lanparty board, but by the sounds if it, you wouldnt be interested in that! (Neither am i! Should anyone want one cheap - pm me - nothing wrong with it, except my ram choice!)
I have a 939 Althon 3500 which you could have for peanuts. Your PCI-E card will slot into a whole range of decent Socket 939 Boards. Some as cheap as £40 will cut the mustard.
Sounds like your current board isnt dual channel, be interested to know if your ram is a matched pair or not.
Cases, should you need one, well - mine cost £29 and is rated extremely highly by the nerdy quiet computer bunch.
All told, if practically what you need to get up and running is a new MB to fix your bios, and fancy a new chip while you are at it, these things can be done for Sub £100.
Its a shame to miss you from the game MBar, so - find a basic laptop and log into TS to discuss!
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no CoX make MBar..something
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That sounds so very, very wrong...
i could be wrong but when u remove the small battery from the mainboard for a couple of seconds.. it resets the bios right 
Could be wrong though
MBar,
sorry to hear that.
In the future, do what I do, and lick your PC a little bit before bed. And keep the case off at all times, and just stare inside it's slender, naked shell with a mezmerised look.
Be carefull with upgrading.
Might be a shot in the dark BUT do you have a big-enough powersupply? Modern computers need a lot of power and a big new graphics card can be just the thing that takes it over the edge. And if your powersupply can't deliver that which is asked from it weird things can happen. Strange computerproblems were solved by upgrading the powersupply. AND if you're gona change you mainboard you might run into problems again if your powersupply isn't big enough.
(DELL is notorious for delivering small powersupply units, you won't have any trouble, until you decide to upgrade.)
(removing the battery does clear the bios settings, the actual "bios-program" is loaded in an erasable and reprogrammable rom)
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i could be wrong but when u remove the small battery from the mainboard for a couple of seconds.. it resets the bios right
Could be wrong though
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Tried, failed. I'm afraid all that does is reset your BIOS settings, not the actual BIOS. I'm waaaaaaaaaaaaay more screwed than that.
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Might be a shot in the dark BUT do you have a big-enough powersupply? Modern computers need a lot of power and a big new graphics card can be just the thing that takes it over the edge. And if your powersupply can't deliver that which is asked from it weird things can happen. Strange computerproblems were solved by upgrading the powersupply. AND if you're gona change you mainboard you might run into problems again if your powersupply isn't big enough.
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Yup, recently was upgraded to a 450W (supplied by the very generous Green Jet), but I'm thinking of going "better safe than sorry" and splashing out on a Tagan with at least 500W belting through it.
That'll show the lot of them!
/em shakes fist at Evesham, and not for the first time
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no CoX make MBar..something
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That sounds so very, very wrong...
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Simpsons quote from their Shinning episode encase anyone wondered.
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no CoX make MBar..something
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That sounds so very, very wrong...
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Simpsons quote from their Shinning episode encase anyone wondered.
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Yeh I noticed but if my memory never fails me, Homer wasn't looking for CoX
Okay, enough with the bad puns
Socket 754 mobos are goin cheap cheap cheap at the moment....try having a look here , there are a few decent mobo's in the clearance line so you should be able to get back up and running ASAP...theres one on there for £20 + Vat actually....
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Socket 754 mobos are goin cheap cheap cheap at the moment....try having a look here , there are a few decent mobo's in the clearance line so you should be able to get back up and running ASAP...theres one on there for £20 + Vat actually....
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Aaaahhhhh, the 754's are in their clearance section ... no wonder I couldn't find them earlier!
Thanks!
Edit: Also on the shopping list is a Floppy Disk Drive. The amount of grief regarding the BIOS I could've avoided if I had one is shocking.
I'm a computer technician and even I hate, fear and dread Bios Updates!!! If they go smoothly it's wonderful...but if they bork....that's it, game over man...game over!!!
Having said that, some mobos now come with dual bios or an auto restore back up of it to get around that problem....if only they'd thought of that years ago!!!!
And if you really have the guts: here's something about Bios hot-swapping.
And a very comprehensive page on updating your Bios and what can go wrong.
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Socket 754 mobos are goin cheap cheap cheap at the moment....try having a look here , there are a few decent mobo's in the clearance line so you should be able to get back up and running ASAP...theres one on there for £20 + Vat actually....
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Aaaahhhhh, the 754's are in their clearance section ... no wonder I couldn't find them earlier!
Thanks!
Edit: Also on the shopping list is a Floppy Disk Drive. The amount of grief regarding the BIOS I could've avoided if I had one is shocking.
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Sooo...
Any progress yet?
Just wondering if you'd managed to break anything else in the meantime :P
BTW, I wouldn't worry (if you were) about Toybox leaving you behind. Since the patch isn't going up until next week, I'm not likely to be playing him until then... 
Warning:
The above post may contain Cynicism, sarcasm and/or pessimism. If you object to the quantities contained, then tough.
Yup, as it now says in my sig, I am the next in the lasting series of players to have rather serious computer problems. But I take solace in the fact its not really my fault. Here's how it was:
I'm guessing the best solution is to buy a replacement motherboard, one untampered with, and that should sort most things. Or I throw it a repair bloke of my own chosing and let him sort it all out (of course, invalidating the warranty, which I may have done anyway by trying to upgrade the blasted thing).
Look me up on Live as MBar (shockingly 
) if you've got similar facilities.
1. Buy new graphics card and install
2. New card has problems, results in crashes while playing CoX
3. Contact made with manufacturer of card, who gives me the default advice of "update all your other drivers, like your motherboard and your BIOS"
4. Flash BIOS with update
5. Computer now stops working, it doesn't even boot up properly (but only after its been on and off a couple of times). Beep code of one long beep every couple of seconds indicates a problem with the motherboard.
6. Ring tech support of original computer supplier, who inform me:
"You shouldn't have updated your BIOS, we're not surprised it's caused problems. Oh, and even though its still under warranty, that particular problem isn't covered."
What this all boils down to is this:
Unnamed Computer Manufacturer screwed around with the original MSI 7030 motherboard, adding a bit of their own tech so that the manufacturer is now "eveshamvale" and the model number is removed, so that upgrading is next to impossible, making you have to come back to them for fixes or new systems. Anything I've tried to do that migrates away from the supplied system has encountered problems.
I'm annoyed, and Unnamed Computer Manufacturer will be getting another phone call at the start of the week, asking why I had the warranty in the first place if it doesn't cover problems caused by them themselves.
So, if anyone can suggest fixes to above problem, or anyway to re-flash the BIOS given the computer doesn't actually boot up, please let me know.
Anyway, my enforced absence (how long it'll be is undetermined at present) does have one side affect: my XBox 360 will see more play-time.
Edit: Oh, and research into possible solutions is currently underway. The tech guy advised me to remove the CMOS battery for a while, but I had it out for maybe a couple of minutes tops. Going to try again later with it out for an extended period.