8400 Startup Strangeness

However, sometimes when you push the power button to turn on the computer, all that happens is a strange clicking noise in the CD/DVD drives and the fan turns on.

After the above sequence does the computer boot ??? if it does then you might have a bad CD/DVD drive---if it dosent boot up I would consider sending it back, why try to find a real problem with a new computer that you can send back----BE FIRM

 

Ok, like I said I was at work at the time and apparently my memory was hazy. It was not clicking, but the beeping of a diagnostic check. After looking in the manual it seems my memory modules were detected but a failure occurred. In the manual it says to take the modules out and insert one at a time and restart the computer to find the faulty module. The only problem with this is that it doesn't happen at every startup, so I may never know if the module worked or not. Does that make sense?

I'm thinking of giving them a call on this one.

Thank you for your help, Grumper.

Well, I don't know what I'm doing anyway, so I'm going to give them a call. I'll probably end up sending it back.

>> you can't remove one and see if it works.. because it's a dual inline module..they need to be in pairs to work..

Yes you can, and the manual also says it is possible. You do lose some speed however. I ran with one 512 for several days waiting for a replacement stick to replace the bad one. The strange thing is that it seemed to run faster with one stick!! Go figure.