SFC/Corrupted Files

[Night Hawk]

Were you hearing one long and two short beeps? That would point at a bad video card with most bioses. With AMI the one long three short points to conventional/extended memory. Computer has three short beeps as it starts.

The AMI as well as other beep code charts are seen at http://www.computerhope.com/beep.htm#04

 

[seekermeister]

No, It was as I said...1 long and 3 shorts.

 

[Night Hawk]

With the AMI bios that audio code points to the system memory. Once you start hearing audio alerts that signifies a hardware fault of some type. When you mentioned which bios was used that was looked up at the site there or you could go to bioscentral which spefies the same there. BiosCentral - AMI BIOS Beep Codes

1 long, 3 shortMemory test failureA fault has been detected in memory above 64KB

 

[seekermeister]

Yes, I know what the beep code means, but not how changing video cards would effect that?

 

[Night Hawk]

Whcih board is this being seen on? I noticed you have two listed in your system specs. The problem may turn out to be bios related rather then card or memory if no faults are found with either. The problem is you would need another system to try both in and run tests on there.

I had one old Asus board some years back when the hardware monitors were first being included report a cpu was "toast"? The high cpu temps(70+C) and backclocking was seen as a cooked cpu. Not so!

When pulling that build apart for parts only and sitting idle for a year the case was reassembled with a fresh battery and what? That same cpu ran like brand new! The memory was even seen as bad with all kinds of faults reported by memtest. Wrong again! Bios mare!

The code pointing at the system memory while the video card is making a difference is also a little suspect if you follow that. The bios programming or unfortunately a problematic board can't be ruled out unless you find out otherwise. One reason why I'm still shopping around for a board for a new build at this time is to get away from the problems Asus has been seeing for a few years now.

 

[seekermeister]

The problem is on my primary rig (first one). You might be right, but I tend to doubt that this is a BIOS problem, because I have the latest BIOS installed, and there has been no other problems that are related. The only time that I have ever had a problem was with the previous chipset that I replaced with the new one, and the problems that I did have were no characteristic, it just went bad.

While it is not the same board, I have a very similar board in my secondary rig, and it has never displayed a behavior like this. I vaguely remember something about a BIOS setting that causes the graphics card to share memory with the RAM. I don't know if that would involve the upper 64MBs or not, nor do I remember ever setting it to do so, but it is enough to conceive of the possibility of a bad video card effecting memory.

EDIT: Here is an article that I just Googled which touches on what I said.

http://www.techarp.com/showfreebog.aspx?lang=0&bogno=187

 

[Night Hawk]

On older boards the video shadowing would see a different name of the AGP aperature that you could manually increase to share system memory with the video card in order to add a boost to gaming performance. Since then of course onboard memory on the cards themselves has seen a tremendous increase as well as the larger vpu processing power ruling out the need for it.

Even with the latest bios update on even a weak battery on a board can cause awkward problems. A bad flasg if the update didn't go on fully is another item. Bad or weak cap on the board itself? You might want to give the board itself a good look over just in case of any discolored area or bulged or leaking cap.

The first board on the present build gave out after only a few days use while a friend went through some 3 separate doa boards at the time. This is why I wouldn't rule anything out unless you find another cause. A bad video card isn't ruled out either just the same. To find out it's a board fault is rather sad in many ways however since Asus had been one of the leading board manufacturers for a long time.

 

[seekermeister]

While I can't say that you are wrong about anything that you have said, what little that I do know doesn't lead me to come to the conclusion that there is some underlying problem, in the motherboard, BIOS or anything other than that the bad video card somehow fouled up the upper memory.

I'm not saying that I'm writing off any of the possibilities that you have eluded to, and I shall place them on the "shelf", in case something more pops up, but I'm not going to start digging for bones at this time.

 

[Night Hawk]

I wasn't rushing to any conclusions but was getting back to you on hearing the audio alert code. If you are still hearing that after removing the troublesome video card with the problems then you would need to look into other possible hardware faults.

The beep code charts seen on both of those two sites for bios error codes lack any for video cards which suggests the one long three short may double for an expansion card as well as the system memory. Anoter site seemingly having more recent information leaves out the one long but lists what each amount of beeps represent for AMI.

3 Beeps

Three beeps means there has been a base memory read/write test error. Replacing the RAM usually solves this AMI beep code.

AMI Beep Codes - AMIBIOS Beep Code Fixes - AMI POST

As far as driver clashes or Windows glitches being the actual problem there's never an exact science to it. You simply have examine every log in some way. Have you tried disabling the video shadow or simply loading the optimized defaults or defaults in the bios to see if that helps any?

 

[seekermeister]

I wasn't rushing to any conclusions but was getting back to you on hearing the audio alert code. If you are still hearing that after removing the troublesome video card with the problems then you would need to look into other possible hardware faults.

That is the point, there is no beeping with the other video card.

The beep code charts seen on both of those two sites for bios error codes lack any for video cards which suggests the one long three short may double for an expansion card as well as the system memory. Anoter site seemingly having more recent information leaves out the one long but lists what each amount of beeps represent for AMI.

3 Beeps

Three beeps means there has been a base memory read/write test error. Replacing the RAM usually solves this AMI beep code.

AMI Beep Codes - AMIBIOS Beep Code Fixes - AMI POST

I have found that such websites often abbreviate the beep codes, thus I take such sites with a grain of salt. What I have found, makes me fairly confident that 1 long and 3 short beeps is for a memory issue.

As far as driver clashes or Windows glitches being the actual problem there's never an exact science to it. You simply have examine every log in some way. Have you tried disabling the video shadow or simply loading the optimized defaults or defaults in the bios to see if that helps any?

These are things that I'm not going to mess with, unless some other problems arises that seems related...so far, it is working just fine.

 

[Night Hawk]

As long as everything else is working normally with the bad card replaced the main concern would be the error code still being heard pointing to a hardware fault. You may want to try running things with only one dimm in at a time to see if a bad dimm is present if that is still heard.