So as a chumpy, yet surprisingly popular Part 2, here it is…

08.02.06 – NOTE: Do not download from the ads on the pages we link you to in this article. All links are the added content.

Squeaks and beeps, very irritating. At times, your computer should actually make some noise. A single beep on start up means that your computer has passed all its ‘Power-ON Self-Tests.’ Those are called POST. When a computer fails a test in POST, it might not be able to display the problem on the monitor, so it beeps.

It’s a very basic thing, but even seasoned tech can’t remember all the meanings of all the beeps. Beeps come from the Motherboard of the computer and BIOS is the system responsible for the beeps. Since there are several different board makers, there are several things that, for example, three short beeps could mean. We’ve gotten computers before that have failed their POST tests but all we hear from clients is akin to, “nothing is on the monitor.”

More helpful to your friendly neighborhood technician is the information about the beeps that you hear. Do you hear one long and two short beeps? Did you hear four short beeps? One case in the repair shop was a constant, single long beep that continued until we pulled the plug. Now let’s learn what that means: Repeating single long beep; board maker – SIS 530 chipset with Socket 7; computer maker – generic Brand X made by her brother years and years ago.

A visit to Google searching SIS 530 Socket 7 reveals 191,000 sites. The first couple tell us this may be an Athlon supporting PCChips motherboard. And this turns out to be wrong. There are two models that look as if they were fairly advanced in their time that support Pentium processors. PCChips’s website, PCChipsUSA.com and their BIOS (Award/AMI) support area is here.

Thankfully, both board models are running AMI BIOS which means that the beep code will be the same no matter which board we’re really looking at. An ‘AMI BIOS beep code’ search brings two pages from BiosCentral with one containing our description here. Another Award/AMI BIOS reference online for discerning which damn board you actually have. Wikipedia delivers impressive little-known stats for American Megatrends, or AMI. As stated in the AMI board site, Phoenix BIOS is often, erroneously lumped with AMI BIOS.

Even before playing detective, we knew what the problem was. Did you figure out what the BIOS was beeping about? After addressing this issue, we were bummed out to discover that the integrated video was, in fact, busted. So what do you know? There will be a part two…