Hi All
Some advice please.
I was wanting to upgrade my PC with more ram. At present it has 1 Gig. So I removed the memory stick and took it to my local PC shop to get another which matched it. They didn't have any and would have to order another one in. Anyways I returned home and refitted the memory stick and attempted to fire up the PC. Now it refused to boot, no system check screen, no boot options, nothing. All that happens is the hard drive spins up, the PC beeps once (as normal) then stops. The hard drive is running and the PC is sending a signal to the monitor as the intel sign comes up. I thought that perhaps I had not refitted the memory stick correctly so I took it out and refitted it (it only goes in one way). Still nothing, so I swapped the stick into a spare ram port, still nothing.
Could this be a problem with the bios? If so does anyone have any ideas?

Thanks!

Gerryh

Well the only thing i can think of without looking is that you messed something up by taking out the memory.

How did you take your memory down to the shop? you could have damaged it on the way and with no memory your PC wont boot up anyway

Was the motherboard light still on when you removed the memory?? this can cause your motherboard to die.

Did you dis-static yourself (maybe by placing your hands on the inside of the case b4 you touched anything inside) cos if you didn't that could have done more damage to your motherboard.

And NORMALLY 1gig of ram is eough for most PC's unless your gaming...so not too sure why u upgrading the RAM (unless you are gaming lol or upgrading the lot)

Hi Thanks for the reply and feedback!
I took all the usual precautions before doing this and the PC had been shut down for over a day so I cant think of anything I've done except that I didn't fit the memory stick properly. Which I have checked several times in different ports. As for upgrading to 2 gigs, my machine has vista which really needs all the ram it can get! But I will shortly be downgrading to XP Home as I think Vista still has a ways to go before being anything useful on an average spec PC like mine. Maybe the Bios has got currupted? Does anyone know how to fix this. Also would a boot floppy help? I have a spare disk drive that I could hook up and I do still have a windows 98 boot disk. But since neither the SATA drive nor the DVD drives are being recognised by the boot up maybe this would'nt work either. No no!

Could also try removing the Cmos battery. It basicaly saves all your settings so would just set everything bk to default.

Also make sure everything is stil connected, that you didn;t accidently knock something out of place like cables.

Thats all i can really suggest bit of a funny one

Hi
Thanks again for the reply.
I tried taking the battery out. Still not booting. Guess I am looking at a dead motherboard. I as mystified as to how it happened. Basically all was fine then nothing after the memory stick was taken out. I've done this loads of times on other PCs and never had a problem.

If you boot without any RAM do you get BEEPS?

Hello Again Jephree!
I tried taking the stick out and booting it. Now theres no intel sign and there is a long beep followed by another long beep. Could the ram stick itself be knackered? Am totally confused!

The fact that the motherboard is beeping is a good sign that the motherboard is OK. It is telling you that no RAM is installed.

Usually if the RAM were "bad" absolutely nothing would happen: no splash screen (Intel).

Have you checked any power connections near the RAM slots for something you might have inadvertently jarred?

Any chance you could have pressed the motherboard against the case beneath?

Any chance of getting a new stick of RAM to try?

Thanks again jephree for replying!
Well thats good news that my motherboard is not dead after all. The other things you mentioned are all possibilities except that I cant get another ram stick right away. I will go over all the connections again. I might have missed one. Another possibility is that perhaps one of the soldered connections pierced the plastic under sheet below the motherboard, but I will have to strip it down to find that. Thanks for giving me hope anyway! I will try all these things and post again. I have one wee worry though, there are power cables that do nothing, they are extra ones for drives ect and there is one that looks like a floppy drive power cable. I dont want to wrongly connect these to the motherboard so I will tag them to be sure. God ! I hope I dont make it worse!

Originally Posted by gerryh

I took all the usual precautions before doing this and the PC had been shut down for over a day so I cant think of anything I've done except that I didn't fit the memory stick properly.

Simply leaving the computer turned off is not good enough. Note the ATX form factor standards calls for +5Vsb standby voltage be applied across the motherboard AT ALL TIMES when the power cord is simply plugged in! The exception is IF your PSU has a master power switch on the back of the supply and you turned that switch off before reaching inside, in addition to the front power switch.

If you did not unplug the computer from the wall, or at least flip the power switch on the power supply at the back of the computer (if present), then it is most likely you fried your RAM when you removed, or reinstalled it.

The motherboard light bryony referred to, if present, is there to remind folks that power is still present. Unfortunately not all motherboards have those LEDs.