Computer Tower Beeping! What Is It?

[AttaGirl42]

Hello Everyone! I'm writing on behalf of my room-mate. She came home from work this morning and checked her e-mail and as she was doing various things on the net, her Tower began a continous beeping sound. Then it went to one solind sound. We rebooted and the sound quit. Then after re-booting, it beeped a short beep after maybe a couple of minutes or so and another beep in another couple of minutes or so. Right now, we just clicked on Shut Down and let the possessed computer rest before it drove us crazy. Any advice or help on what has made it start this? She has a HP computer that is only 2 years old but one of those years it was covered and in a closet and not used. She uses Windows 98 and has Internet Explorer 6.0. If you need any more info, just ask, and I'll be glad to answer. Thanks for the help!

[SuperSparks]

Check that all the fans are running. Some mobo's have a fan failure warning which is a continual beeping. It could also be RAM going bad.

[AttaGirl42]

Okay...Thanks Nick! I'll check those. I also ran across some older posts and found links to Bios Beep codes too and am looking those over. I appreciate your answer and help! Thanks!

[Bill in SD, CA]

If the system is up and running when the beeps start the BIOS beep codes are not the problem. They only apply during the POST.

Bill

[AttaGirl42]

Hi Bill...Yes...the Beeps come while the system is running. After closing all applications and going offline and just having desktop in view, a single short beep would occur every few minutes or so. The long continous beeping was only one time. But the short one beep sound seems to be here to stay.

[arifu]

AttaGirl42

And if you leave it on long enough the short beeps will end up into a long continuous beep.

That system is over-heating.

Take off the cover and see if the CPU fan is spinning. If so, shut down and clean it. Also, as the cover is off place a desk/floor fan to blow into it.

Over heating will damage the CPU and motherboard.

arifu

[dasguru]

perchance are you running Weatherbug? My computer went nuts and after dumping weatherbug the symptoms went away. One of the problems was beeping and going bizarre.

[Ridgerunr]

I agree with arifu, remove the cover and give the inside a thorough cleaning. Observe static precautions and don't use a vacuum cleaner unless it's made for electronics cleaning. Get some canned air to blow it out. Alcohol(the 91% rubbin' kind,not the Jack Daniels version ) and cotton swabs to clean the gunk off the fan blades an' such.

[Bill in SD, CA]

Yeah, check the fan(s) and clean out the dust. You may want to remove the fan from the processor and clean out the dust in the heat sink also.

Bill

[AttaGirl42]

Wow! Some great advice! Yes, my rommie is running weatherbug, but I've been running it for several years and have had no problems. This afternoon, I noticed after turning it off for several hours, and turning it back on, no beeps or anything for a long time. My roomie decided to open a folder on her desktop while still not connected to the internet and she got one beep. She closed the folder and decided to see if it would beep if she were online too. So when she clicked on her Icon to sign on, it brought up the previous folder, which was weird. It took a couple of tries to make it quit that. I think it's possessed. The fans are working and it's all cleaned out inside. It seems to work fine when she is using it except for the random beep. I will uninstall weatherbug just to be sure. She has 128MB of RAM and her hard drive is 14 GB. It's not even half full. She began having trouble with her CD-ROM awhile back and I had posted about that and I'm wondering if any of this is connected? There were no beeps back then however. It just would not work sometimes and then sometimes it would. But I digress. She doesn't do all the video rich gaming or anything, or video editing or etc, mainly e-mailing, surfing, and offline basic games. I'll keep tinkering and see what I can do, and thanks for all the tips and advice! I appreciate it alot!!!!