Computer beeps constantly from internal speaker, but no signs of any problems. Windows 98se NEC Pow

[Nate Goulet]

I have several identical NEC Powermate SL computers.
Windows 98se NEC Powermate Slim 600mhz Celeron, etc. They are about 5
years old now.

One of them started beeping from the internal speaker almost a week
ago. It boots Windows fine, and no sign of any problems with it other
than the beeping, which can be as often as more than once per minute
or less frequent.

This computer boots just as fast as the others. Anti-virus is up to
date and didn't find anything. No spyware found either.

Generally a beeping noise like this I assume is BIOS indicating some
type of hardware failure, but i've yet to pin point it.

The floppy drive does not work, and I wondered if it could be this. I
disabled it in BIOS, and removed the ribbon cable from the motherboard
& removed it from Device Manager. Oddly, the floppy controller keeps
getting re-installed. The A: drive shows up no matter what I do to
get rid of it, and says "Removable" next to it. No idea if this has
anything to do with the beeping. The computer has still been getting
used, and the data is backed up.

I ordered another power supply in case it has anything to do with
that. If not i'll probably need a spare in the future for another
machine. I opened the machine last week, and it was very dusty. It
was last cleaned less than a year ago, but is dusty environment.

I cleaned the machine out good, including the power supply & CPU fans,
and verified they both spin normal.

The computer does not feel warm to touch.

I'm wondering about maybe the ram going, but no indications of it as
all programs work fine. The gold contacts were very clean.

If it were a hard drive problem, it seems like i'd see other signs.

CMOS battery has never been changed, but I can't picture it causing
beeping while running Windows.

Any ideas?

Thanks,

Nate

 

[Grinder]

I have several identical NEC Powermate SL computers.
Windows 98se NEC Powermate Slim 600mhz Celeron, etc. They are about 5
years old now.

One of them started beeping from the internal speaker almost a week
ago. It boots Windows fine, and no sign of any problems with it other
than the beeping, which can be as often as more than once per minute
or less frequent.

This computer boots just as fast as the others. Anti-virus is up to
date and didn't find anything. No spyware found either.

Generally a beeping noise like this I assume is BIOS indicating some
type of hardware failure, but i've yet to pin point it.

The floppy drive does not work, and I wondered if it could be this. I
disabled it in BIOS, and removed the ribbon cable from the motherboard
& removed it from Device Manager. Oddly, the floppy controller keeps
getting re-installed. The A: drive shows up no matter what I do to
get rid of it, and says "Removable" next to it. No idea if this has
anything to do with the beeping. The computer has still been getting
used, and the data is backed up.

I ordered another power supply in case it has anything to do with
that. If not i'll probably need a spare in the future for another
machine. I opened the machine last week, and it was very dusty. It
was last cleaned less than a year ago, but is dusty environment.

I cleaned the machine out good, including the power supply & CPU fans,
and verified they both spin normal.

The computer does not feel warm to touch.

I'm wondering about maybe the ram going, but no indications of it as
all programs work fine. The gold contacts were very clean.

If it were a hard drive problem, it seems like i'd see other signs.

CMOS battery has never been changed, but I can't picture it causing
beeping while running Windows.

Any ideas?

If you have another identical computer, you could swap in components to
see if you could isolate what part is triggering the beeps. As a wild
guess, I would first try the keyboard as I have seen such a thing happen
to a sloppy wine drinker (aren't the all?) I know.

 

[kony]

I have several identical NEC Powermate SL computers.
Windows 98se NEC Powermate Slim 600mhz Celeron, etc. They are about 5
years old now.

One of them started beeping from the internal speaker almost a week
ago. It boots Windows fine, and no sign of any problems with it other
than the beeping, which can be as often as more than once per minute
or less frequent.

So it's only a single beep at a time or only a few but not
immediately repetitious?

If so, it's probably a windows generated error and windows
is then beeping the speaker. Try to isolate what is
running, run scandisk and SFC (system file checker), though
it can be a bit difficult to weed through what are and
aren't valid newer files unless you had made a newer file
signature file, so it's hard to know what is ok or where to
get some of the files after so much time has passed (unless
you are regularly dealing with these systems and remember
all these old '98 issues?).

This computer boots just as fast as the others. Anti-virus is up to
date and didn't find anything. No spyware found either.

Try another scanner or two, I had an old box that hadn't
even been turning on for months, was just sitting around
after someone had abandoned it into my care, and it only
found viri after the antivirus was updated.

Generally a beeping noise like this I assume is BIOS indicating some
type of hardware failure, but i've yet to pin point it.

Leave the system sitting in the bios menus or boot to DOS
and leave it sitting to see if the beeping starts. I
suspect it is due to windows. Has anything at all changed
on this system recently? Keep in mind it could have
happened earlier but until Win9 had rebooted, applicable
changes might not have been made that caused this.

The floppy drive does not work, and I wondered if it could be this. I
disabled it in BIOS, and removed the ribbon cable from the motherboard
& removed it from Device Manager. Oddly, the floppy controller keeps
getting re-installed. The A: drive shows up no matter what I do to
get rid of it, and says "Removable" next to it. No idea if this has
anything to do with the beeping. The computer has still been getting
used, and the data is backed up.

I'd grab a spare floppy drive to test that, it could be the
problem.

I ordered another power supply in case it has anything to do with
that.

I doubt it, unless system was so instable as to be causing
errors but you make no mention of other problems which
should be evident too.

If not i'll probably need a spare in the future for another
machine. I opened the machine last week, and it was very dusty. It
was last cleaned less than a year ago, but is dusty environment.

You might look into sealing off most of the case holes
except a primary intake path and put a filter over that.
The filter will of course have to be cleaned periodically
but that could be easier. Sometimes it's hard to put a
filter on but one lazy way is to just take off the bezel,
drill a few holes and put in steel bolts. I mean use the
bolts as magnetic attachment points, you can then put a
filter panel on an area and magnets on the other side of the
filter opposite where you placed the bolts, so filter panel
comes off simply by pulling magnets off. I don't know how
much airflow these systems need though, or how much
accesssibility - sometimes they can be put in a cabinet with
a filter on that and an exhaust fan in the back, instead.

I cleaned the machine out good, including the power supply & CPU fans,
and verified they both spin normal.

The computer does not feel warm to touch.

I'm wondering about maybe the ram going, but no indications of it as
all programs work fine. The gold contacts were very clean.

Ram does not generally fail like this, it would be far more
likely the slot contacts were fouled with dust/grime or the
motherboard itself had degraded - which could cause memory
to fail I suppose but generally the board would become so
instable the system wouldn't run at all first. You can
check the memory with memtest6+, but I doubt that's the
problem (though you could have memory errors too, in
addition to whatever is causing the beeping, or memory
errors could cause the beeping but the modules themselves
are physically ok, rather it's only an instabilty caused my
the motherboard or PSU).

If it were a hard drive problem, it seems like i'd see other signs.

CMOS battery has never been changed, but I can't picture it causing
beeping while running Windows.

If you need to rely on these systems it would be good to go
ahead and replace the batteries, they are old enough now
that their expected lifespan is up... regardless of whether
they're causing the beeping or not.

 

[paulmd]

I have several identical NEC Powermate SL computers.
Windows 98se NEC Powermate Slim 600mhz Celeron, etc. They are about 5
years old now.

One of them started beeping from the internal speaker almost a week
ago. It boots Windows fine, and no sign of any problems with it other
than the beeping, which can be as often as more than once per minute
or less frequent.

This computer boots just as fast as the others. Anti-virus is up to
date and didn't find anything. No spyware found either.

Generally a beeping noise like this I assume is BIOS indicating some
type of hardware failure, but i've yet to pin point it.

The floppy drive does not work, and I wondered if it could be this. I
disabled it in BIOS, and removed the ribbon cable from the motherboard
& removed it from Device Manager. Oddly, the floppy controller keeps
getting re-installed. The A: drive shows up no matter what I do to
get rid of it, and says "Removable" next to it. No idea if this has
anything to do with the beeping. The computer has still been getting
used, and the data is backed up.

You have to disable the controller in the BIOS to make it go away.
Except you did. Double check the settings to make sure it's still
disabled, if the BIOS is losing settings, it could be a battery issue.
Especially if it "forgets" what time/day it is when it's been
unplugged.

I ordered another power supply in case it has anything to do with
that. If not i'll probably need a spare in the future for another
machine. I opened the machine last week, and it was very dusty. It
was last cleaned less than a year ago, but is dusty environment.

I've seen them get choked up in weeks. One customer in particular lives
on a high traffic dirt alleyway.

I cleaned the machine out good, including the power supply & CPU fans,
and verified they both spin normal.

The computer does not feel warm to touch.

I'm wondering about maybe the ram going, but no indications of it as
all programs work fine. The gold contacts were very clean.

If it were a hard drive problem, it seems like i'd see other signs.

CMOS battery has never been changed, but I can't picture it causing
beeping while running Windows.

$3 part. An inexpensive experiment.

Any ideas?

Well, we know it has to be beeping for a reason. Beeping while running
(not just POST) is often a warning of SOME hardware failure (real or
imagined). Do you have hardware monitoring set up in the bios? And if
so, is it set to monitor fans/sensors that don't exist (case fans, for
instance).

Another practical solution: decide the computer is 5 years old, and is
starting to fail, if the problem is with hardware monitoring, disable
hardware monitoring. Make sure your data is backed up. And save for a
new computer. Wait for old one to die.

 

[Bennett Price]

Perhaps it's beeping because it can't find the floppy drive which the
drive controller is looking for.

 

[meow2222]

I have several identical NEC Powermate SL computers.
Windows 98se NEC Powermate Slim 600mhz Celeron, etc. They are about 5
years old now.

One of them started beeping from the internal speaker almost a week
ago. It boots Windows fine, and no sign of any problems with it other
than the beeping, which can be as often as more than once per minute
or less frequent.

This computer boots just as fast as the others. Anti-virus is up to
date and didn't find anything. No spyware found either.

Generally a beeping noise like this I assume is BIOS indicating some
type of hardware failure, but i've yet to pin point it.

The floppy drive does not work, and I wondered if it could be this. I
disabled it in BIOS, and removed the ribbon cable from the motherboard
& removed it from Device Manager. Oddly, the floppy controller keeps
getting re-installed. The A: drive shows up no matter what I do to
get rid of it, and says "Removable" next to it. No idea if this has
anything to do with the beeping. The computer has still been getting
used, and the data is backed up.

I ordered another power supply in case it has anything to do with
that. If not i'll probably need a spare in the future for another
machine. I opened the machine last week, and it was very dusty. It
was last cleaned less than a year ago, but is dusty environment.

I cleaned the machine out good, including the power supply & CPU fans,
and verified they both spin normal.

The computer does not feel warm to touch.

I'm wondering about maybe the ram going, but no indications of it as
all programs work fine. The gold contacts were very clean.

If it were a hard drive problem, it seems like i'd see other signs.

CMOS battery has never been changed, but I can't picture it causing
beeping while running Windows.

Any ideas?

Thanks,

Nate

Depending on what youre doing with it it may be ok to unplug the
internal speaker and forget about it. I've got one that gives a beep
code at every boot up but all runs fine. If youre not doing anything
critical with it you can just regard it as a risk factor.


NT

 

[Nate Goulet]

Perhaps it's beeping because it can't find the floppy drive which the
drive controller is looking for.

I'm certainly thinking that could be causing it.

However, i've disconnected the ribbon cable from the controller on the
motherboard. The only mention of the floppy drive in BIOS says the
drive is turned off.

Again, when I go to My Computer, an A: drive is listed.
It does mention Removable disk (which it isn't).

Maybe a jumper on the motherboard to completely disable this?

Any ideas.

Computer still works fine. Could be a Windows error, but seems odd
everything still works fine.

Reloading a different hard drive will be time consuming, and disrupt
the users.

I'll probably end up giving them another pc, then reloading a
different hard drive next to my pc while i'm working on other tasks.

Nate

 

[Bennett Price]

Slap a floppy in so that you know where the problem lies; at this point
the floppy may or may not be the problem.

 

[kony]

I'm certainly thinking that could be causing it.

However, i've disconnected the ribbon cable from the controller on the
motherboard. The only mention of the floppy drive in BIOS says the
drive is turned off.

Again, when I go to My Computer, an A: drive is listed.
It does mention Removable disk (which it isn't).

Is the Floppy Disk Controller still shown as Disabled in
Device Manager? If not, disable it there.

Maybe a jumper on the motherboard to completely disable this?

Any ideas.

Yes, the obvious one- get a floppy drive and hook it up.

Computer still works fine. Could be a Windows error, but seems odd
everything still works fine.

Obviously everything does not, "everything" includes a
floppy drive on Win98.

I'll probably end up giving them another pc, then reloading a
different hard drive next to my pc while i'm working on other tasks.

So you will either:

A) Not install the floppy drive on the other PC and may
have same problem, -or-

B) Install the floppy drive on the other PC.

How about just:

C) Install the floppy drive on that PC.

 

[Rosemary]

I think you said you had a NEC computer. I have one and it's about the
age of yours. My issues were maiinly with Post codes ( beeping on
starting) and blue screen crashes with all kinds of stop messages
seemingly unrelated to anything. I'm running Windows XP and also had
some freezing problems with the mouse, all kinds of nasty surprises.
Finally after trying everything I realized I just didn't have enough
RAM and that the graphics especially were hogging it. I just installed
a 512 MB memory card on top of the miserable 256 that was onboard. All
issues vanished.

I know this isn't exactly what you described but I think your instincts
about the RAM were good and a very good place to start might be to put
in new/more memory and see if it helps.

Good luck!