Boot problem with Gateway 300se

I offered to get a friend's Gateway 300se computer running right
again. It's a Gateway 300se with 256M ram. I removed packages such
as Norton and McAfee which were sucking up CPU cycles. I also removed
a lot of jpegs which were consuming much of his disk space.

My mistake came when I thought, to be nice, I'd upgrade his memory to
512Mbytes ( The 300se has a maximum of 512 Mbytes). When I opened the
case, there were huge globs of dust, so I vacuumed out the inside. I
installed the memory and powered it up. I got 3 beeps (about 1/2
second long, about 1 second apart) and no video - the monitor green
light just blinks.

I took bottled air and blew out the memory slots (with memory
removed), video connector (on the mother board, no video card) and
hard drive. I still got the same results.

I then removed the memory sticks, the keyboard and mouse connectors
and the Ethernet cable. Now it's only the power cable and video
cable. Still the same result.

I reseated all cable connectors inside - disk, etc, held in the power
supply self test button and still the same results. The power supply
light is green, the power button on the front is green. There is no
hard drive light (that I know of).

Is the motherboard fried? Anything else I can try? I've used 4
different new memory sticks in both/either slots.

Thanks for any suggestions.

In
news:9dd00880-5b12-4a4f-8729-3c25d4578218@k13g2000hse.googlegroups.com,
Steve-E typed on Mon, 26 May 2008 15:45:32 -0700 (PDT):
> I offered to get a friend's Gateway 300se computer running right
> again. It's a Gateway 300se with 256M ram. I removed packages such
> as Norton and McAfee which were sucking up CPU cycles. I also removed
> a lot of jpegs which were consuming much of his disk space.
>
> My mistake came when I thought, to be nice, I'd upgrade his memory to
> 512Mbytes ( The 300se has a maximum of 512 Mbytes). When I opened the
> case, there were huge globs of dust, so I vacuumed out the inside. I
> installed the memory and powered it up. I got 3 beeps (about 1/2
> second long, about 1 second apart) and no video - the monitor green
> light just blinks.
>
> I took bottled air and blew out the memory slots (with memory
> removed), video connector (on the mother board, no video card) and
> hard drive. I still got the same results.
>
> I then removed the memory sticks, the keyboard and mouse connectors
> and the Ethernet cable. Now it's only the power cable and video
> cable. Still the same result.
>
> I reseated all cable connectors inside - disk, etc, held in the power
> supply self test button and still the same results. The power supply
> light is green, the power button on the front is green. There is no
> hard drive light (that I know of).
>
> Is the motherboard fried? Anything else I can try? I've used 4
> different new memory sticks in both/either slots.
>
> Thanks for any suggestions.

It doesn't sound good Steve. Vacuuming can cause static charges and blow
out sensitive electronics. I blew out the I/O chips on a Commodore 128
by vacuuming the keyboard (the computer is inside of the keyboard).
Being an electronic engineer, I should have known better. Although this
happens so rarely, we still take some risks. For example, if the
humidity is high like 70% or higher, harm is on the low side and you can
risk not taking static precautions generally.

Another thing I would try is cleaning the memory slots with isopropyl
alcohol. Maybe the vacuum attachment had a film on it and smeared it on
the contacts. And with the memory cards themselves, use a clean pencil
eraser on the contacts. And make sure the alcohol is dry before applying
power. It shouldn't take long, a few minutes perhaps. But wait longer if
necessary. Get back to us if this doesn't work.

--
Bill

Those 3 short beeps mean memory issue. Take the original 256mb stick and
try it in each slot see if any will let you boot. One of your slots may be
faulty now because of the vaccum.

"Steve-E" <stevererickson@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:9dd00880-5b12-4a4f-8729-3c25d4578218@k13g2000hse.googlegroups.com...
>I offered to get a friend's Gateway 300se computer running right
> again. It's a Gateway 300se with 256M ram. I removed packages such
> as Norton and McAfee which were sucking up CPU cycles. I also removed
> a lot of jpegs which were consuming much of his disk space.
>
> My mistake came when I thought, to be nice, I'd upgrade his memory to
> 512Mbytes ( The 300se has a maximum of 512 Mbytes). When I opened the
> case, there were huge globs of dust, so I vacuumed out the inside. I
> installed the memory and powered it up. I got 3 beeps (about 1/2
> second long, about 1 second apart) and no video - the monitor green
> light just blinks.
>
> I took bottled air and blew out the memory slots (with memory
> removed), video connector (on the mother board, no video card) and
> hard drive. I still got the same results.
>
> I then removed the memory sticks, the keyboard and mouse connectors
> and the Ethernet cable. Now it's only the power cable and video
> cable. Still the same result.
>
> I reseated all cable connectors inside - disk, etc, held in the power
> supply self test button and still the same results. The power supply
> light is green, the power button on the front is green. There is no
> hard drive light (that I know of).
>
> Is the motherboard fried? Anything else I can try? I've used 4
> different new memory sticks in both/either slots.
>
> Thanks for any suggestions.