My homebuild on the fritz after four years - need troubleshooting guidance

[Doghouse Riley]

I built this machine in the spring of 2008. It was my first build and worked so well that I built an identical machine for my wife a few months later.

Nothing much has been done to change it since except an upgrade from WinXP to Win7, swapping the original 2x750GB HDDs' for 2x2TB, and carefully removing dust bunnies from the innards once a year or so.

Now as of last weekend she's on the fritz.

Friday evening, I got a couple of video card error messages followed by the screen being overwritten by static and then BSODs. This has never happened before. Tried a couple of driver fixes found online, but no improvement.

Then Saturday morning she died complete. When powering on, I get a single beep, followed by a fan spinning up, followed by another single beep ~10 secs later. Nothing on-screen but black.

What's my best source for troubleshooting steps? I have a video card I can try to swap in, but do not want to do that unless I'm reasonably sure it won't be immediately fried.

Here's the box and what's in it.

Antec Sonata III case with original PSU
Abit IP35 Pro mobo (yeah, having a mobo from a defunct mfr does not help)
Intel Core 2 Duo 2.66 processor, stock fan, never OC'd
Corsair 2x2GB DDR2 SDRAM
EVGA 320MB GeForce 8800GTS, never OC'd
2 x 2 TB WD Caviar 7200 rpm HDD's
Lite-on 20X SATA DVDRAM burner
Windows 7 Ultimate 32 bit, drivers and patches mostly current
Samsung 22" LCD monitor

Thanks!

[glc]

Break it down.

Having problems with a new build? Try this.

[MaxRat]

Sounds like the video card maybe gave up the ghost...

The Abit IP35 is a beastly board and should be okay... i wouldnt hesitate to swap in another card and try it...

I just traded off my Abit X38 Mach-gt and it was still happily running.... best board I have ever owned by far... sad they went under

[jdeb]

Originally Posted by MaxRat Sounds like the video card maybe gave up the ghost... The Abit IP35 is a beastly board and should be okay... i wouldnt hesitate to swap in another card and try it... I just traded off my Abit X38 Mach-gt and it was still happily running.... best board I have ever owned by far... sad they went under

excellent board