PCFormat Forum Archive

A few minutes ago, my PC froze while browsing the web. So I decided to reboot, and all I get is something along the lines of "Drive A error - System halt"

Since I'm accustomed to Drive A being a floppy drive, and since I haven't had a floppy drive for half a decade, I reboot again, but now all I get is a constant uniform beeping from the system speaker. Nothing on screen.

I assume my mobo is damaged, BIOS corrupt or something?

if it's hunting for a bootable floppy, chances are the mobo can't initialise the HDD.... try swapping the drive - if the problem persists, the board is probably gone or on its way...

Try looking in the bios for any floppy devices, and disable it, usually on the same page where you will configure your other dirves.

I had this problem a while back with an older mobo.

The mobo shouldn't be faulty.

As puppi says, it is probably a problem with the hdd. Do you have a bootable disk?

Sorry, didn't read that you couldn't boot again... Have you tried to reset the bios?

could also be the PSU is not getting current to the HDD...

D3, take the CMOS battery out wait 30 min, put it back in. try starting up then. see what happens.

but now all I get is a constant uniform beeping from the system speaker.

Sounds alot like ram to me.

KALSTER wrote:Sounds alot like ram to me.

not impossible... and it would prevent access to the bios... but prevent disc mounting?

<grammar nazi>
alot = "to apportion"
a lot = "a great deal of"
</grammar nazi>

Firstly, check that none of the connections are loose.

You need to test your machine and see if its the ram or graphics or mobo or processor. So remove/unplug everything else, and the ram and see if your machine will post. If that fails, then you need to try a different graphics card or psu, if that still fails, then i think its your mobo or cpu. If you can safely test any of it with another pc, that will also help.


your boot/power sequence is graphics bios, mobo bios, cpu, ram, usb, hdd's. You're hdd's are unlikely to cause the problem unless its power related because they boot last. Your graphics bios is not initialising.

bios corruption does not make sense as the trouble started while you were in windows, did it not?

so i'm thinking its your graphics card or psu-possibly something causing a dead short which would definately cause this.

Thanks everyone. I'm busy trying everything suggested, I'll report back later

KALSTER wrote:

but now all I get is a constant uniform beeping from the system speaker.

Sounds alot like ram to me.

+10 000 forum points to you, it was the ram after all. Swapped modules and the problem is gone!

well done n00b

Ram, Thou art not false, but thou art fickle.

Firestrm wrote:well done n00b

There is hope for me yet.

I will also in future allot more brain power towards preventing grammar mistakes that would tend to group me in with the "I are wearing a jean pant" demographic!

Spam Spam Spam Spam.....


D3PART3D, if you need this thread re-opened let me know please