Tutorials - Hardware

Principles of Hardware Troubleshooting

This tutorial will teach you the principles of hardware troubleshooting.

Rules:
1- NEVER trust a computer! Always BACKUP.
2- Before you touch ANYTHING inside the case, Shut down the computer and disconnect the power cord (Believe me! I'm the one who got 220V electric shock twice!)

Beep Cheating Chart:
Most of the time, when a computer doesn't work, they will signal with some beeping code. I put the beep cheating chart that you can refer to and find what the problem is.
NOTE: Most of the computers uses the first chart. If the beep you're looking for does not exists, look at the second that third chart.

What's next after I found the problem?
You have to remember that if you see any of these "Bad" signals, it does not mean the particular part is dead! It might have been moved slightly.

So for example if you get 1 short beep and nothing happens next, the first thing you should think of is to take your video card out and put it back in (it might have been moved) and so on.

For some of the problems, you need equipments. For example if you get no beeps at all the first thing you should do is to check the power cord. Is it in? Next check if the power supply's fan is working. If not, that means your power supply might be dead. Now you have to test your power supply and to do that you need another power supply to install on your computer. If the computer worked, that means your old power supply is dead...

IBM BIOS Beep Cheating Chart (General):

1 Short	Completely normal, no errors detected.
1 Short Beep and nothing happens after (You don't see anything on the monitor either)	Disk Drive or Video Related Problems
2 Short	Initialization Error, DMA, ROM, Floppy, Serial or Parallel
3 Short	Bad memory
1 Long, 1 Short	Motherboard malfunction
1 Long, 2 Short	Video card malfunction or problem with video RAM
1 Long, 3 Short	Video card malfunction
No Beeping	Bad power supply or system board (or no PC speaker hooked up)
Continuous Beeping	Bad power supply, processor, or system board
Constant Short Beeps	Bad power supply, processor, or system board

American Megatrends (AMI) Beep Cheating Chart:

1 Beep	Memory timing error
2 Beeps	Mismatched memory parity
3 Beeps	Memory malfunction
4 Beeps	Motherboard malfunction
5 Beeps	Bad CPU
6 Beeps	Keyboard controller error
7 Beeps	General exception error
8 Beeps	Video memory error
9 Beeps	Bad ROM checksum
10 Beeps	CMOS error
11 Beeps	Bad cache RAM

IBM BIOS Beep Cheating Chart (General):

1 Long	Memory malfunction
1 Long, 2 Short	Video malfunction
1 Long, 3 Short	Video/motherboard malfunction
Continuous Beeping	Memory or video malfunction
Other Beeps	Bad system RAM