Workstation boot and lockup.

[angmed]

As indicated above, on 3 different z840 I get 5 beeps and no boot. 

I must say, on one of those workstations, mistakenly,  I took out the fans shroud while it was still on, right after that the 5 beeps for ever.   Different CPUs and new  RAM.  Hard drives not arrayed.  Gone through the new BIOS download and pins-jumper routine and all that a thousand times.  At the beginning I got into BIOS couple of times but no hard drive found, now nothing, just 5 beeps.    Used 2 different sticks of RAM and two different CPUs on the three units, all to no avail.

One could say, the motherboard is bad on one workstation..... But in all of them at the same time????????

I read here about an IT guy with the same issue one several units at once ,  but  I did not find the resolution.  Cast adrift now. 

Thanks for a life-saver, if possible.

[itsmyname]

@angmed -- hindsight is wonderful. 😞

Whatever you might have done "wrong", you did the same "wrong" thing on all 3 computers.

Maybe, you should not have "disturbed" the 3rd computer.

Did you accidentally loosen the video-card's connection to its socket?

Did you try just one stick of RAM in one computer, in each of the available RAM sockets, to see if you damaged all the sockets, when you pulled-out all the RAM? 

Some HP computers can "sense" when you remove the shroud over the RAM.

Maybe, remove the CMOS battery from the motherboard, then power-on the computer, to see if that "resets" all the BIOS settings to their "factory" values? Power-off, and re-insert the CMOS battery, and reboot. The BIOS may complain that the date/time are invalid, and prompt you to enter BIOS Setup, to set valid values, and to "load default values" for all the BIOS settings.

[angmed]

Thanks for your post.  Tried all those tricks many, many times to no avail.  If you're familiar with the HP Z840, it has a designated slot for each/number and amount of RAM.  By placing a module out of place gives an error right off the bat.  Designed that way.  Your lament is wise, I have a fourth Z840 running fine which I don't dare touching from year of the same results.  I wonder if there is a nook in the RAM modules to remember settings off the router.  I used that same router and cable, but I had the fourth unit also running.   LIGHT BULLB !!!!   Now I will try with only one unit running on the router.

Thank once again.