What happens when your computer’s BIOS beeps back at you – That’s Really Frustrating
What is the reason for a child to start crying? Well, you can come up with many different answers but the simplest answer to the question would be probably he needs some attention for one of his problems. Your computer is just like that. Whenever it encounters one of the hardware PC errors or BIOS errors while performing the Power ON Self Test, it starts beeping to attract your attention.
Beep codes are used by the BIOS during the POST to report certain initial system errors. If you’re hearing beep codes after you turn your computer on, it typically means that the system has encountered some kind of problem before it was able to display any kind of error information on the monitor. A beep Code is a an audible code generated during the power on self test when the BIOS encounters a problem but has not booted far enough to display a POST error message on the monitor. Every major BIOS manufacturer has a unique set of beep codes that can be generated during their POSTs.
There are various patterns in which you can hear your system beeping. It is like a coded language for conveying its problem. And like two children have their own unique pattern of laughing or crying the BIOS beep codes vary from manufacturer to manufacturer. To understand your computer’s beeping language and the PC errors it is point towards, you need to refer the owner’s manual your manufacturer hands over to you when you buy your computer.
If you have misplaced the owner’s manual there is no need to fret as many manufacturers take care of posting this very useful beep codes on their website. You can also take help of the vast resources available on internet for finding the Beep Code if you know the type of your motherboard. You will find that most of the motherboard vendors use the popular Bios codes from AMI or Award.
You will find many computer technicians and experts making use of these beep codes to identify your PC errors when you call them for fixing your PC. They carefully listen to the pattern of short beeps, long beeps and sometimes the mixture of short and long beeps. They try to count the number of beeps and to be sure about the pattern of beeps you will find them restarting your computer for number of times.
So, what are they trying to do? The pattern and number of beeps tells them about the exact location of the problem. Once they identify the pattern they know which steps to take to troubleshoot and reach to the root cause of problem. For example from the beep code they know where is the problem. Is it within motherboard, RAM, parity circuit, system timer, cache memory, processor, display card, keyboard, Keyboard controller or elsewhere in the motherboard?
The beep codes also help them to make decisions about whether it is really necessary to replace the hardware component to fix the PC errors. So that what beep codes are trying to do, attracting your attention.
Processing your request, Please wait....
