Deskpro EN: not booting, beeping, caps lock blinking

Hi,

I've been using a fairly old Compaq Deskpro EN (the convertible
tower/desktop model, with a Celeron 400 CPU) as a file server on my
home network. Chose it because its fan is nice and quiet and the
machine *seemed* fairly indestructible.

However, last sunday, after running it non-stop for four months, I
needed to install some Windows updates and of course, it had to
reboot. I was fully expecting to see an Option ROM Checksum error - it
started showing that after the 3Com NIC was built in but it didn't
seem to hinder operation. Like I said, it had been running for four
months without any problems.

But now it didn't even get that far. Upon reboot, all I got was 3 beep
signals:
long-short, long-short, long-short-short. And then it just sits there
with the caps lock LED blinking.

Hunting the net I found that I could have:
- an option ROM failure
- a system ROM failure
- a system board failure (yikes!)
- a faulty gfx card

Now before I tear the machine apart (I can hardly reach it so that's
quite an operation) are there any of you out there that can give me a
clue as to what is the most likely thing to have happened? Anyone
recognise this behaviour?

Grtz,
Friso

yes seen several times when a g100 or g200 videocard is installed. run a
bios update and it worked fine. download the bios on an other computer and
make the diskette. then put the disk in the machine and turn in on while
holding esc. turn the machine after 5 min of, remove the disk and reboot.

"Opsokkebolje" schreef in bericht
...
Hi,

I've been using a fairly old Compaq Deskpro EN (the convertible
tower/desktop model, with a Celeron 400 CPU) as a file server on my
home network. Chose it because its fan is nice and quiet and the
machine *seemed* fairly indestructible.

However, last sunday, after running it non-stop for four months, I
needed to install some Windows updates and of course, it had to
reboot. I was fully expecting to see an Option ROM Checksum error - it
started showing that after the 3Com NIC was built in but it didn't
seem to hinder operation. Like I said, it had been running for four
months without any problems.

But now it didn't even get that far. Upon reboot, all I got was 3 beep
signals:
long-short, long-short, long-short-short. And then it just sits there
with the caps lock LED blinking.

Hunting the net I found that I could have:
- an option ROM failure
- a system ROM failure
- a system board failure (yikes!)
- a faulty gfx card

Now before I tear the machine apart (I can hardly reach it so that's
quite an operation) are there any of you out there that can give me a
clue as to what is the most likely thing to have happened? Anyone
recognise this behaviour?

Grtz,
Friso

Or just put another gfx card in the machine and run the bios update as usual



rpv wrote:
yes seen several times when a g100 or g200 videocard is installed.
run a bios update and it worked fine. download the bios on an other
computer and make the diskette. then put the disk in the machine and
turn in on while holding esc. turn the machine after 5 min of, remove
the disk and reboot.

"Opsokkebolje" schreef in bericht
...
Hi,

I've been using a fairly old Compaq Deskpro EN (the convertible
tower/desktop model, with a Celeron 400 CPU) as a file server on my
home network. Chose it because its fan is nice and quiet and the
machine *seemed* fairly indestructible.

However, last sunday, after running it non-stop for four months, I
needed to install some Windows updates and of course, it had to
reboot. I was fully expecting to see an Option ROM Checksum error -
it started showing that after the 3Com NIC was built in but it didn't
seem to hinder operation. Like I said, it had been running for four
months without any problems.

But now it didn't even get that far. Upon reboot, all I got was 3
beep signals:
long-short, long-short, long-short-short. And then it just sits there
with the caps lock LED blinking.

Hunting the net I found that I could have:
- an option ROM failure
- a system ROM failure
- a system board failure (yikes!)
- a faulty gfx card

Now before I tear the machine apart (I can hardly reach it so that's
quite an operation) are there any of you out there that can give me a
clue as to what is the most likely thing to have happened? Anyone
recognise this behaviour?

Grtz,
Friso

--
mvh
Torbjørn Moen