I’ll have to go back and read the entire post, or at least the replies since I posted, but the beeps are a specific beep code that varies by BIOS. Find out what BIOS your motherboard uses, I Haven’t kept up recently, but 3 or 4 years ago they were using AMI, Phoenix and one other I can’t remember. Once you find out, it should be listed on the initial start up screen, but m0ost these days use a splash screen instead, which can be disabled in BIOS.
Here’s a decent page that outlines most of the BIOS access keys at start up.
http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000192.htm
Find out what BIOS you have and you can google the beep code, and often the codes are also listed in the motherboard manual. If you have a printed copy, great, but most are pdf files, your P4 may have had a printed one, P4 was in the early days of companies going cheap and putting it online instead. That beep code is to tell you it has a problem and what that problem is.
Most of the time you should get one beep at start up telling you everything is OK.
From your description, it does sound like heat, and it could also be a heat problem related to the video card too. Check to see if the video card has a heatsink and fan, I’ve had to replace those too. I don’t remember, if you had a lot of dust inside, get some canned compressed air and blow it out good (go outside, trust me). Don’t use a vacuum cleaner, if it has any jumpers it can suck those off the pins and you’re hosed. You can generally use a vacuum on the power supply, but I don’t recommend it, take it apart if you have to, but get all the dust out you can. Dust is your enemy. It acts just like a blanket and holds heat in, as well as blocking the fins of the heatsink so it can’t cool the way it should.
The best way I know of to isolate a heat problem is to put a small fan blowing into the main case fan area, and see if it stops acting up. Lots of times just keeping the computer in a small, closed space causes problems because it can’t circulate air well. Like those computer desks with small cabinets on the side...I took the door off mine and cut a big hole in back, no problems.
That’s all I can think of right now...
[[From your description, it does sound like heat, and it could also be a heat problem related to the video card too.]]
Thanks Paleo-
I’ve tried another video card and still the problem kept happening- I’m really at a loss for what it could be- I’ve switched out psu’s, video cards, removed al l the peripheral cards trying ot get it to start with not luck, reseated all the ram, even switched them I n their slots- Even removed all ram (to see if there was a beepcode- no beeps) then replaced one by one but nothing helped the computer to start- tried a new cpu cooler, replaced the battery- trying two new batteries (because when computer would start I’d get the ‘low Cmos battery’ message and have to go into bios to rest the time- but this was intermittent too- sometimes I got message, other times not)
I’ve reseated the heatsink many times, reseated all the peripheral cards, tried different slots for them checked all the capacitors for bulges or leaks- something is just really not right- and I can’t figure it out- I fear it’s a motherboard issue- as that is all I can think of that hasn’t been changed out
As for the beeps, sometimes it would beep, other times not- now it isn’t beeping at all when the computer will start
[[I don’t remember, if you had a lot of dust inside,]]
Nope- clean machine- took out vid card, cleaned off the fins blew it out with canned air etc- cleaned cpu heatsink etc- board is all clean- etc-
[[Lots of times just keeping the computer in a small, closed space causes problems because it can’t circulate air well]]
I use an ATX case with tons of room, and have 4 fans along with vid card fan, psu fan, cpu fan etc- this was an alienware gaming computer- and had lots of cooling- but I’ll run a larger desk fan into the case on the gpu to see if that makes a difference, but I have tried another card and still had the problem- so not sure if that will help, but perhaps it will