Computer Randomly Beeps

[Guest]

About every 7 to 10 days, my personal computer begins to make a loud, double
beeping noise: high, low, high, low, high, low, etc. No errors are shown and
I can continue using the computer and all programs (although the beeping is
obviously annoying). And there is never a particular program running that
may cause the beeps to start. (Also, the sound comes from the computer, not
through the speakers.) The only way I have found to solve the problem is to
re-boot the computer. Do any of you have any suggestions as to (i) what may
cause the beeps, and/or (ii) how to prevent them going forward?

Thanks in advance for the assistance!

mucrick

 

[PA Bear]

Contact the machine manufacturer to learn what it means.

 

[Ron Badour]

Beeps such as you describe are normally generated by the BIOS. There are
several web sites that have info--search on: BIOS Beep Codes

Here is one such site: http://www.computercraft.com/docs/beeps.shtml

 

[nl]

My brother had a similar problem and it turned out his CPU fan was
failing - the beeping was an alarm that came and went intermittently.
You might want to open your machine up and see what happens inside
when it'r runing. An overheated CPU is Not Good.

I don't know what to do about the beeps Going Forward, though. I only
suggest this as a way of preventing them.

 

[dobey]

About every 7 to 10 days, my personal computer begins to make a loud,
double
beeping noise: high, low, high, low, high, low, etc. No errors are shown
and
I can continue using the computer and all programs (although the beeping
is
obviously annoying). And there is never a particular program running that
may cause the beeps to start. (Also, the sound comes from the computer,
not
through the speakers.) The only way I have found to solve the problem is
to
re-boot the computer. Do any of you have any suggestions as to (i) what
may
cause the beeps, and/or (ii) how to prevent them going forward?

Thanks in advance for the assistance!

mucrick

Sounds like either an overtemp warning, or no fan, (fan not spinning),
warning.

The beeps are codes and mean different things. For example, the one beep you
hear during start up means everyting is OK. This come from the BIOS and not
Windows - (though it may do if you have hardware monitoring software
installed). Different manufacturers may use different beeps, but often the
basic ones are very similar.

If you check the BIOS you will probably see a menu called PC Health or
similar. In here you can see voltages, Temps and fan speeds of, (usually),
the CPU, chipset, CPU fan and 2 other fans, voltages. Don't be alarmed that
two of the fan speeds will probably read zero, as there are connections on
the mother board for extra fans.

There will likely be a setting for the alarm on CPU temp, and fan fail.

My sister had a similar problem, hers turned out to be the temp alarm. At
the time I couldn't do much so I just set the alarm a few degrees higher to
stop the alarm and it didn't occur again. In her case the temp was just
exceeding the alarm threshold due to dust and other debris that had clogged
up the heatsink/fan over the years. A good cleaning of these components
probably would have sorted it out.

When your CPU overheats your PC will stop responding after some period of
time then will work after being turned off for a while, it just depends on
how fast the heat builds up after you turn it on. Overheating a few times
isn't likely to hurt the CPU, unless the heatsink falls off completely, but
even then some hardware can cope with this.

It could also be one of the voltages it out of bounds and setting off the
alarm, but you will need to find the exact beep code for that event. The
siren you described is normally temp related.