What the hell?....
Posted: Thu Mar 15, 2007 2:42 am
A few times when I play some tracks in 1946 I keep getting beeps from my CPU and my system crashes. I never had overheating before so what gives?
Tiny Tip: BIOS Beep Codes
In SOS June 2002, as part of my PC Musician article on Fault Finding, I covered BIOS Beep Codes and stated that you should refer to your motherboard manual for the particular sequence of beeps relevant to your PC. However, I thought it would be useful to provide a short list of the most common ones for IBM/Award PCs, neatly gathered together.
No beeps: no power, faulty motherboard or CPU, or badly seated peripherals.
One short beep: Everything is normal (you should hear this every time you boot up, after the POST routines).
Two beeps: POST or CMOS error (perhaps your battery has failed).
One long beep, then one short beep: Motherboard problem.
One long beep, then two short beeps: graphics card not properly seated or faulty.
One long beep, then three short beeps: similar to above, but may indicate faulty video RAM.
Three long beeps: faulty keyboard.
Continuous long beeps: badly seated or faulty RAM.
Continuous high/low beeps: overheated CPU.
These codes should account for most PCs, except for those with AMI BIOS chips (seemingly far less common than those fitted with Award chips), and those with older Phoenix BIOS chips, which featured a complex system of four sets of short beeps interspersed with pauses. However, how that Award Software and Phoenix Technologies have merged, we can perhaps expect to see the simpler Award scheme take over.
