87GT Posted December 13, 2007 Report Share Posted December 13, 2007 So one of my older machines has been acting up. It makes a steady beep from the PC speaker and locks up everything. Not my normal speakers ! Haven't had this happen before. I decided to format it and install XP again. During the very first part when it installs drives to start the cd it started beeping again. This time it beeped for 5 seconds then stopped. Then it would load drivers. Then it beeped again and stopped. At the moment it is copying the setup files to the formatted hard drive. So I guess it is going to be ok. Maybe the hard drive or the motherboard is dying? It is an Asus P4T with 1.5Ghz P4. 1gig of RAMBUS. Old 20 gig hard drive for the O/S. What do you think? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Slimpsy1647545505 Posted December 13, 2007 Report Share Posted December 13, 2007 System speaker beeping could indicate a number of things, but most primarily it's your power supply going bad, faulty memory, or your cpu failing to function properly. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheHaze Posted December 13, 2007 Report Share Posted December 13, 2007 I've had it happen before because of a burnt up cpu. It could be pretty much anything hardware related, though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blue98ls1 Posted December 13, 2007 Report Share Posted December 13, 2007 You can usually find out what the problem is based on how many beeps and if they are long/short beeps. Could be anything from video card, cpu, BIOS being bad, memory.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
87GT Posted December 13, 2007 Author Report Share Posted December 13, 2007 I will go buy a new power supply and see what that does. I've never had it beep when the PSU was going out. It would just turn off and never turn on. It could be the memory. I bought some used on ebay a month ago. Could be the CPU too. It was one of the first batch of P4s made. Yay for IBM employee discounts! Weird. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
87GT Posted December 13, 2007 Author Report Share Posted December 13, 2007 You can usually find out what the problem is based on how many beeps and if they are long/short beeps. Could be anything from video card, cpu, BIOS being bad, memory.... Like I said it is always a LONG beep. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blue98ls1 Posted December 13, 2007 Report Share Posted December 13, 2007 Like I said it is always a LONG beep. Do you know which version of BIOS is on the computer? I can probably look it up based on that. 2 of the most common ones: If its an IBM, then a continuous beep means you have a loose card or short. If it is Award BIOS, then it is probably a RAM problem. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
87GT Posted December 13, 2007 Author Report Share Posted December 13, 2007 I am pretty sure it is Award. I will check after windows xp install completes. Just so we are on the same page it does not beep at POST. It does this while in windows xp, or the setup programs for xp. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blue98ls1 Posted December 13, 2007 Report Share Posted December 13, 2007 I am pretty sure it is Award. I will check after windows xp install completes. Just so we are on the same page it does not beep at POST. It does this while in windows xp, or the setup programs for xp. We're on the same page. If it is indeed Award BIOS, it will make this continuous beep if there is a memory failure while the system is running. I have also seen this happen when the CPU is overheating. Most common cause of this is the CPU fan not working. These would be the 2 things I would check first. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
87GT Posted December 13, 2007 Author Report Share Posted December 13, 2007 I will try to remove the used memory I bought. I know CPU fan is spinning. I have a window on the side of my case. Maybe it is full of hair... Edit it is award. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blue98ls1 Posted December 13, 2007 Report Share Posted December 13, 2007 Canned air is your friend for cleaning the CPU fan. Let me know if you need any more help with this. I've done tech support for a long time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
87GT Posted December 13, 2007 Author Report Share Posted December 13, 2007 Well after removing the memory I see that the heat sink is not on correct. Seems one of the 2 metal arms won't clip to the motherboard. So the CPU is probably overheating. I need a replacement part for my motherboard. The metal arms to hold down the heat sink. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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