screen goes blank and...

[Guest_imported]

My pc has started to freeze very regularly and yesterday, the screen went off altogether whilst in Microsoft Word. The screen went blank, the monitor went into standby, the harddrive light went bananas and the cd drive light was also flashing and I could hear the cd turning inside.

Restarting the machine, I heard two tones, one after the other, would this be my graphics card making this noise?

My system is an Athlon 650Mhz, 256 MB Ram, 16GB HDD, NVidia TNT2 32MB Ram graphics, Soundblaster 128 and a samsung monitor.

Has anyone got any ideas what the problem might be?

Cheers
PS. My CD Rom sometimes fails to work, I have to keep opening and closing the bay to get it to work, other times it`s fine. I bought a new one but the same happens with the new one. Could this be the problem? I deleted all drivers etc for the old one before installing the new one.

 

[edfair]

probably the display adapter self destructing or overheating. In normal operation the cd and video don't interact in the way you describe the failure so I would assume separate problems
The tones are either error codes or OK signals depending on the bios on the M/B. You should have a M/B manual with error codes.. Ed Fair
efair@atlnet.com

Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply.

Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.

 

[Guest_imported]

I checked the overheating and it doesn`t seem to be that, the temp (using Motherboard Monitor) didn`t go above 40oC.

 

[Element]

I had something like that happen to me as well. It ended being my power supply. After replacing it the problem went away.

 

[Guest_imported]

Hey, it could be that actually. With motherboard monitor, it`s saying that my temperatures are ok but the Core 1 value is in the red at 3.41V.

Do you think it might be that that causing the problem?

 

[Element]

If you are having low readings like that, your system might boot but will cause it to do strange things. I think that by replacing it you will solve your problems.