I swear, if its not one thing its another. (see other posts)

I recently purchased a stick of 512mb RAM. It is PC2100 DDR, not the best, but the same stuff I had running already. I installed it and the improvements were noticed instantly. I thought while I was at it, I would do some "house cleaning" I.e. remove programs that were not used and clear the temp folders.

I went to scrub the temp internet files...it hung, and instantly went to the boot up screen. I waited and waited and it never booted up. I pressed F2 and the bios flashed and the whole screen went black. I then decided to cycle the power and a black screen is all I have now....No signal. The computer turns on, but nothing on the screen. What happened?

These are my hypothesizes:
1) Roasted the onboard graphics card (I know, I was going to upgrade)

2) The whole MOBO is roasted.

3) The RAM corrupted something

I think its time I build my own computer. However, funds are tight... What is salvageable? What mobo should I look at? Can someone point me in the right direction...I.e. A build your own PC FAQ of sorts?

My system:

HP Pavilion 751n

 

Is f2 for entering bios or for flashing it?

 

I thought is was for entering the BIOS...I'm not sure to be honest.

 

if you can figure out how to clear your CMOS you can most likely get it to boot. Most mobo's come with a jumper to clear it. There will be like 3 pins for your cmos and a jumoper will be covering 2 of them. Slide it off and move it over to the middle one and the unused one. Wait 10 seconds then put it back and reboot.

 

Here is a picture (crappy) of my mobo. Can you walk me to where these jumpers might be? I appreciate the help.

 

Rugby,
At the top right of your pic it looks like a row of jumpers, can't realy tell. The mobo will say cmos on it next to the jumper look around on it and follow sabre's info. Does the side cover of the case have a layout of the board, you might be able to see it there. If you still can't find it you can try and pull the battery (to the right and above the RAM slot) out and wait a while and put it back in, that will clear the cmos also. Did you put the RAM in correctly? Did you make sure and ground yourself before messing with the chips or mobo (static is a beyatch). Try putting the old ram back in and see if that works and then look at the bios see if you need to change something in it for the bigger RAM.

 

On my old PC I have a broken plastic thing that holds down the RAM.
I know for a fact if you do not have the RAM in all the way, it can mess things up.

I had no video when that happened, and it would not boot right.
Got the RAM inserted all the way after some major cussin', and all was fine in boot land.

If you do build a system in the near future and go with Intel, take a gander at my mobo on my PC page.
It is not expensive, but has many features such as overclocking, turning on the PC from any key you want to set up, and a whole ton of cool stuff.

It is also a jumperless mobo.
You can set everything from the BIOS.

 

OK I looked at the support page for your system. Go thru it and read it to make sure you did everything as outlined, pay attention to step 6 and step 8. It looks like you need to have all of the slots filled with either a RAM chip or a continuity chip (not RAM but a pass thru). Did you do that? Also you do need to go into the bios and get it to recognize the new settings. Hope that helps.\

HP RAM help

 

Brad,

Yes, it helped show me how RETARDED I am! I resemble my avatar more and more everyday. I put the old RAM back in and it fired right up. I didn't do any of those steps, and I didn't even bother reading the support page.

I'm SO anxious to start modeling some parts and a long travel shock system that I have in the forefront of my mind. I didn't even think about installing the RAM. I did just about everything wrong. WOW, this is so humbling. Good thing I bought the RAM at Best Buy...

Thanks a bunch Brad. I will get this stuff eventually. I just hope I learn from my mistakes.

Thanks Corey, I will scour your page for information and move out from there. Do you know of any good pages to read about building your own PC?

P.S. Corey are there any retarded smiles out there... I can think of a good use for one right now!