GA-8IRXP refuses to boot, alarms abound!

For no apparent reason (as per usual), my GA-8IRXP system has stopped booting...at all. Even the BIOS doesn't load. About 4 seconds after I push power, I get the "beep beep beep" alarm sound ad infinitum. The motherboard is still powering up as all the LEDs lit up and (duh) the alarm sounds to no end.

I experienced this about a year ago, but the alarm went off and the system booted up after a forced shutdown and a power cycle. I reseated every PCI card and RAM module, all to no avail. Also, the processor is not overclocked nor is the Radeon 8500 in the AGP slot.

My only thought is this: there is a little nickel-sized battery adjacent to the PCI slots. Perhaps this battery has died? The mobo is four years old almost to the day.

Anybody have any idea what might be causing this?

thanks,
-=adam=-

 

A similar thing happened to one of my machines. Do all of your fans spin? In my case they did not- pressing power would get a flicker and then everything would die. I removed the video card and it powered up just fine -fans and all- but beeped at me because there was no video output. Try removing all your expansion cards, including video and see if it powers up. Yours should also beep at you. If it does, replace just the video card and see what happens.

If you get no beeps at all, u may have a bad mobo.