Published
October 17th, 2009 by
Roslyn Garavaglia Listen to your computer; it’s trying to tell you something….
Why is the Computer Beeping?
If when you turn on your computer you begin hearing random beeps while your system tries to boot, there is something going on with your BIOS that is not normal procedure. The BIOS “boots” your computer.
BIOS means Basic Input Output System. The BIOS is firmware, the software that is programmed into a ROM (Read-Only Memory) chip built onto the motherboard of a computer. BIOS is what makes the system run an initial Power-On Self-Test of the computer, initialize circuits, load the boot program from the boot disk, and then handle low-level peripheral controllers such as keyboard and display.
The computer POST (Power-On-Self-Test) tests several components such as power, BIOS, CPU, memory, and video. Only if all those tests pass, the computer will then allow the operating system to load. But if one or more of these tests fail, beeps indicate a problem and the boot process is halted.
When your computer begins to beep, the first thing you should do is count the beeps and take note of the pattern. (Is it one long beep? Is it several short beeps? How many?) This will help your computer technician figure out exactly what your computer is trying to tell you.
If your system loads correctly but the beeping continues, a problem still exists but has not reached a critical level where it will affect your everyday operations. This should never be ignored as it will progressively get worse and drive you nuts!
Many people immediately turn off their computer, turn it on again, and continue rebooting not realizing they may be causing more problems for the BIOS than they intended.
The number of beeps is dependent on your computer’s particular BIOS and is unfortunately not standardized across manufacturers.
While figuring out what the beeps mean is by no means foolproof, by carefully identifying the pattern, your technician may be able to pinpoint the type of problem and correct it
General Beep Codes:
If the BIOS manufacturer is unknown the following will be the general Beep codes:
• 1 Long and 1 Short Beep. Bad Motherboard
• 1 Short Beep and nothing else happens Disk Drive/Video Related Problems
• 1 Long and 2 Short Beeps? Bad Video Card
• 1 Continuous Beep or Non-stop short Beeps. Bad Power Supply
• 3 Short Beeps – Bad Memory
Listen to how your computer beeps at you!
Tags: beep noises, bios errors, computer beeping, computer beeping noises, POST error
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