True story - We had a local customer whose computer was beeping constantly through its PC speaker, even though it seemed to be working perfectly. Our customer happened to be a retired navy man who knew Morse code very well. After a couple hours of listening to the beeping he found two Morse code messages that he believed we overlaid on top of one and other. According to our customer, the messages were "Why aren't you listening to me" and "Can't you hear me."
While we would never doubt the sincerity of one of our customers, typically BIOS beep codes are pretty simple to figure out. Use the charts below to learn what your computer is trying to tell you when it seems to be beeping uncontrollably.
|
BEEPS
|
ERROR DESCRIPTION
|
|
1 Short
|
Completely normal, no errors detected.
|
|
2 Short
|
Initialization Error, DMA, ROM, Floppy, Serial or Parallel
|
|
1 Long, 1 Short
|
Motherboard malfunction
|
|
1 Long, 2 Short
|
Video card malfunction or problem with video RAM
|
|
1 Long, 3 Short
|
Video card malfunction
|
|
No Beeping
|
Bad power supply or system board (or no PC speaker hooked up)
|
|
Continuous Beeping
|
Bad power supply, processor, or system board
|
|
Repeating Short
|
Bad power supply, processor, or system board
|
|
BEEPS
|
ERROR DESCRIPTION
|
|
1 Beep
|
Memory timing error
|
|
2 Beeps
|
Mismatched memory parity
|
|
3 Beeps
|
Memory malfunction
|
|
4 Beeps
|
Motherboard malfunction
|
|
5 Beeps
|
Bad CPU
|
|
6 Beeps
|
Keyboard controller error
|
|
7 Beeps
|
General exception error
|
|
8 Beeps
|
Video memory error
|
| 9 Beeps |
Bad ROM checksum
|
|
10 Beeps
|
CMOS error
|
|
11 Beeps
|
Bad cache RAM
|
|
BEEPS
|
ERROR DESCRIPTION
|
|
1 Long
|
Memory malfunction
|
|
1 Long 2 Short
|
Video malfunction
|
|
1 Long 3 Short
|
Video/motherboard malfunction
|
|
Continuous Beeping
|
Memory or video malfunction
|
|
Other Beeps
|
Bad system RAM
|
@2024 All Rights Reserved
