Startup problem... long-short sound pattern, but no beeps...

[eqmassa]

I started defrag on my desktop computer and left the house. I got back 2 hours later and something strange was happening. The computer was powered off (no lights on but the red motherboard light) and it was emitting a long-short sound pattern. The thing is, the sounds were NOT beeps. I’ve troubleshot motherboards before and am not sure what this sound was. It sounded kind of like a “static electricity”-type sound effect, long-short, long-short, long-short, very deliberate and well-spaced.

I was at a loss, so I turned off my surge protector (i.e. unplugged the computer), waited a few minutes, and then turned it back on. Everything was normal. I’m pretty worried/confused. Any tips? (I'm running an AMD Athlon 2500+ Barton core processor on an Abit NF7-S mobo with 1024mb Corsair RAM... all about 4 years old)

[Negeva]

Sounds like faulty RAM to me. Try re-seating it and/or running MEMtest on it.

[ITlover]

Take out all your RAM chips,try to boot your computer with 1 RAM chip and see if it stays on , then insert another RAM chip and reboot your computer and see for how long it stays on,continue this way and you will be able to know whether it was your RAM chips or something else.

Run a memory test by using www.memtest.org

If it is not a RAM problem than most probably it is your Power Supply.

Did you face such problems before defragmenting your files?

What i understand and guess is that after defragmentation, your paging file process has effected your RAM memory and might have caused it to sleep .

Does your Power Supply fan works fine when you see your motherboard red light on?

[Cricket]

That sounds like an overheating alarm.

Did you open up the case to see if it needs a good cleaning?

Check all the heatsinks to see if they're full of dust.

Check all the air vents to see if they're clogged with dust...even the air vents on the power supply.

Cricket