Help with transferring old hard drive and ram into new pc

[lilbrett]

My friend got a new gaming pc and gave me his old one. The only parts it had missing were the hard drive and ram, so I put my hard drive and stock ram from my normal Asus desktop into the new pc. The pc boots, but nothing appears on the monitor and there is 3 long beeps. Is this because I have stock ram in an aftermarket motherboard?

 

[lilbrett]

My friend got a new gaming pc and he gave me his old one. The only parts it was missing was the hard drive and ram. The computer I had before was an Asus. It was a normal desktop pc and not custom built. I put the hard drive and ram into the new pc and the pc boots, however nothing appears on the monitor and there is 3 long beeps that keep continuing. Is this because I have stock ram in an aftermarket motherboard?

 

[rgd1101]

you usually cannot mix and match ram, either try with just the new ram or just the old ram.

 

[lilbrett]

I'm not mixing ram, i'm only using the stock Asus ram. Could my ram be incompatible?

 

[GreenToxon]

Nothing appears on the monitor because the hard drive and the motherboard/drivers/ etc don't match up. You would have to do a clean install of windows on the hard drive using your newly acquired pc.

The RAM should be fine, as long as it's 240 pin (Which I believe is standard for current desktops.)

 

[bak0n]

http://www.pchell.com/hardware/beepcodes.shtml

I would try re-seating your memory and only putting 1 in and booting.

Also, what is the model of memory you have and the model of the board.?

 

[Mousemonkey]

This next topics has been merged by Mousemonkey
■ Help with transferring old hard drive and ram into new pc.

 

[Murissokah]

Nothing appears on the monitor because the hard drive and the motherboard/drivers/ etc don't match up. You would have to do a clean install of windows on the hard drive using your newly acquired pc.

He will have to do all that, but the computer should post regardless of drivers or OS. It should post then complain about something going wrong during boot.

Since it does not post at all, and instead beeps, it means there is something wrong with a vital hardware component. I would assume that would be the RAM.

Please try clearing the CMOS on the motherboard, your buddy may have set the BIOS up in a way that your RAM is not supported.

To clear the CMOS you will have to move a jumper on the board, so please have the manual with you.

 

[Zooshooter]

My friend got a new gaming pc and he gave me his old one. The only parts it was missing was the hard drive and ram. The computer I had before was an Asus. It was a normal desktop pc and not custom built. I put the hard drive and ram into the new pc and the pc boots, however nothing appears on the monitor and there is 3 long beeps that keep continuing. Is this because I have stock ram in an aftermarket motherboard?

As GreenToxon wrote, this sounds like a problem with your ram. You'll have to figure out if the ram you have is compatible with the motherboard. If not, you'll need to get some that is. If it IS compatible with the motherboard then try clearing the CMOS and reboot. If it still doesn't boot at all after clearing the CMOS and you're positive the memory is compatible then it might be the power supply, either that it is bad or that it can't supply the power required to boot. Honestly though, I'd be really surprised if that was the case since you mentioned that the only parts you put in are a hard drive and ram.

If the computer DOES boot after clearing the CMOS but still errors out to a blue screen you may want to try running a system repair by booting from a Windows cd. Where I work we swap out hard drives between different models of dell computers every once in a while and if the models are too far apart they'll boot to blue screen and the above method is how we usually fix them. You'll end up with a very basic installation of Windows and you may need to go out and get drivers for the chipset, ethernet, audio, etc components on the motherboard, but it should at least boot into Windows at that point.

If the computer does NOT boot after clearing the CMOS and making sure that the memory is compatible you'll likely have to do a completely fresh install of Windows. For that I would recommend using a second hard drive so that you can copy over your data and files from the hard drive that currently has Windows installed on it. Unless there isn't anything on that first drive that you're worried about losing, of course. If you couldn't care less and have all the installation discs for the software that you want then go ahead and use the hard drive you have.