Friend's Computer = Busted

[SlimXero]

Ok, so a friend of mine brought me his hard drive saying he was having problems and asked me to format and install windows for him. I did that, and so he brought the hard drive home, plugged it in, and his computer will not boot. At all. No video output what-so-ever. He says when he first put the hard drive in, it emitted a series of beeps, and he shut it off and called me. I came over after work, turned it on, same situation only no beeps. So i began removing his RAM sticks, one at a time, and trying different combinations of his 3 sticks of ram in the machine, each time getting a DIFFERENT series of beeps... I just got off work 15 hours, so my brain is sh*t, any thoughts on this? Help would be appreciated. I'm going to take it home and try my RAM in it, but i think the chances of all three of his sticks of ram being shot are slim, although he did just move, and he's not computer savvy, so is a possibility.

[SlimXero]

well, from what i've seen the mobo is dying... i finally got it to boot, but is misreading the ram capacity, and won't boot at all with secondary ide cable plugged in, keeps freezing when loading windows (a fresh install no less) and sometimes works with this video card, some times works with that, and other times not at all. So unless i missed somethin the mobo is going kaput, and he's been wanting to upgrade anyway. Sorry for the short lived topic.

[VampYre]

Posting what error beeps would be handy. As its used to diagnose what the actual problem is.

Ram, if its differnt speeds or even different manufacturs, it could be an issue.

Hard Drive, some hard drives, and even some cd/dvd rom/rw drives if bad, can cause a machine not to boot.

Strip down enter machine, until its just motherboard, processor, 1 stick of ram, and video card, and attempt to boot. Make sure all hard drives, all rom drives, and all cards (modem/nick/sound/ect) are pulled from machine.

Then post your results from that.

[SlimXero]

meh, he claims he needs to upgrade anyway and it gave him a reason to build a new machine...