3 beeps on start up, please help

[midhunmon]

My PC was working fine and suddenly in the middle of working it hangs and restarts and after that there was no video and the monitor goes to standby mode. The power LED of the PC is ON. So i restarts the machine again, this time manually and now it produces 3 beeps.Then i decided to check the RAM and for it i tilted the whole cabinet and after tilting it i switched on the machine and voila, the problem is gone and the machine starts and works just fine. its like there was some kind of loose contact and after shaking the cabinet its gone.

This happens sometimes once a day , sometimes after 2-3 days.The problem is intermittent and i can't find the problem. I checked the memory with a memory testing tool(not the one which needs u to create a bootable disc, but some thing similar) and got no errors.If the hardware is damaged it should happen often, right?

I checked the event log and every time it restarts there is a log saying- "wuaueng.dll (3212) SUS20ClientDataStore: The database engine has successfully completed recovery steps".

Whats happening to my PC. i know 3 beeps are normally for memory error but if it is a memory error why does it disappear after just moving the cabinet? PLEASE Help.

My MB is Intel 945GCNL, 2 GB 667MHZ DDR2 Corsair, No Video Card(only Integrated), PSU is a cheap one(might be mercury) HDD Hitachi 160GB. Memory and HDD volume showing correctly as of now.


EDIT Now the error happened again this morning after one week of the previous appearance. This time moving the cabinet didn't work. i had to take out the RAM and put into another slot and the problem went away. after that i put the RAM in the previous slot again and the problem was not to be seen.
Is my RAM going bad or is it some loose contact. If its getting defective then why the problem appears and then disappears?

[midhunmon]

More than 100 views and no reply. Please help.

[asingh]

Try to physically re-do all the connections once. Also reset the CMOS.

[Scott274]

Even I would like to know about this beep on startup. My problem is I don't get any beep on starting my machine and even the power LED doesn't glow anymore.

About a month back I was experiencing the same problems you described, restarts and the system going into standby mode all by itself. Got my motherboard repaired (they didn't say exactly what part on the motherboard had gone bad but charged me 350 bucks repairs, probably a bad capacitor). Even then PC didn't work, so got my SMPS replaced under warrenty, turned out that had gone defective too. PC started working then but still I kept experiencing restarts from time to time. But since some days now the restarts have gone away. My guess is there was probably something wrong with the harddisk even though the diagnostic programs (Seagate's SeaTools & HD Tune) didn't report anything wrong. Nowadays modern HDDs are self repairing which could be the cause of the my PC suddenly running ok on it's own. You can try running primary format and disk defragment later on if the restarts continue.

[ikkru]

Yes... Same problem with me also..

some times when i switch on my computer, nothing will happend for about one minute. then three beep sound will come. no display... iam facing this problem so many times and fedup with it. some times there will be no problem at all.. i check all the methods that i know. but no use.

now iam in a conclusion that, it may be because of the problem with my PSU (most probly) or with my GPU(less chance)

[topgear]

3 beeps on startup is related to ram prob - it's either with slots or the ram it self.

another possibility is the ram slot clips on the mobo can get weak - so the pc works fine for several daya or even months and suddenly you experience probs and you reinsert the ram modules and the prob solves and comes up again and by reinserting the module it resolves and this goes on.

[DigitalDude]

when the system works, run memtest to see if there is any problems in RAM. and also use some hdd tools like hd tune to see if there are bad sectors in hdd



_

[ikkru]

any free tools to check RAM and Motherboards?
link please

[Scott274]

Memtest86 or Windows Memory Diagnostic for RAM, just google for latest versions.

I don't think there is any software which can fully diagnose motherboards. You best bet would be to get it diagnosed by an electronic technician or the respective manufacturer's nearest service center.

[topgear]

@ ikkru -

Download memtest86+ from here :

Memtest86+ - Advanced Memory Diagnostic Tool

burn it on a CD, it will make bootable CD, boot your pc with that CD and start the diagnostic process.