[SOLVED] System fails to boot up, possibly overheat problem?

[szogyenyi]

Hello. A week ago a friend of mine asked to take a look on her recently recieved computer. She took it as a gift, but she was warned about the fact that the PC wasn't used in 3 years now or more.

So basicly, the computer did not send any kind of signal out to the monitor, so i thought it might be some hardware issue. I swapped out the RAM modules, put both of them back, everything worked perfectly. But after 15 minutes the whole system just restarted, and with every restart it took less and less time to restart again. It got so bad it doesn't even boot up anymore, because it just freezes during the boot screen or automaticaly restart during the memory test. I tried taking out the RAM modules, using only one of the time in each slot, but it didn't work at this point. Right now it starts beeping like a police siren. I read some forums where people say it is a possible overheating problem. I picked off the CPU heating, cleaned both the fan and the CPU, reapplied some thermal paste, but the problem still remains. I starting to wonder what if the motherboard itself is about to die, but i cannot confirm that by myself. What do you suggest guys?

 

[Vic 40]

Whats the closest it sounds like that beep,
http://www.computerhope.com/beep.htm
probably AMI.

Is it possible to test with another psu?

What parts in the pc? Any idea? Most parts have info on them.

 

[szogyenyi]

The motherboard is an ABIT IS-20, CPU is Intel Pentium 4 (don't know much more details, did not check it while it was running) and it has 2 sticks of 1GB DDR RAM running on 400 MHz.

It's just interesting why i didn't beep like that in the first time. But i checked out right after starting up the PC, and in the BIOS the CPU were running on 54 celsius. Isn't that a big high?

Unfortunately i don't have a spare PSU to try it out, to be honest it doesn't really worth the effort to disassable the whole thing again just to put another cheap one into it's place.

 

[Vic 40]

Maybe some easy fix,replace the motherboard battery (leave some 5 minutes in between),then after that set the bios to optimal default values (if you can get in at that point).