One Long Beep after Windows 98 Splash Screen

[sweetinnocence]

Hi People,

Have a problem with a computer....

Phoenix BIOS on a Acer F1 computer.

One long long beep right after the Windows 98 Splash screen, then the screen goes blank.

I tried replacing memory with a stick that i know goes, seated properly.

I looked up memory codes for the Phoenix, but it is past the POST stage as far as i can tell, and it's not producing a beep code that i can find the answer to.

I don't want to replace the mainboard as there is a programme on there which they don't seem to have anymore, it's specialised software.

I'm suspecting something to do with video, is onboard, and thinking to try A New AGP video card since there is a slot.

Any help appreciated, i did search site, there was one called "One Long Beep" but it didn't give me the answers i was looking for.

[Graham L]

It's certainly worth a try with a plugin video card.

You could try starting it with no keyboard plugged in, in case it's something simpler .

Can you get into the BIOS setup? That does use the simplest possible video format, so it might still work even if Windows uses a non-functioning mode.

Otherwise ...

[sweetinnocence]

yip, i can get into the BIOS, set it back to default, which made no difference
cleared the CMOS from the board as well just incase it was some silly frequency problem.

So will wait for the video card to turn up from Dove tomorrow morning, just a cheap fx5200, if that doesn't work at least i have a spare for testing AGP slots ;-)

[tweak'e]

if its beeping after windows start its not a bios post beep code.

check you fans/heatsink, it could be an overheat beep.

have you tried safe mode?

[Graham L]

Well, that probably clears the keyboard. And since the BIOS setup works, the CPU works. ;) That BIOS setup is a programme, like any other, except that it's usually stored in ROM.

[sweetinnocence]

could also be the refresh rate set too high, but will not know til i reset it with another video card.

[tweak'e]

refresh rate is default (60) in safe mode.

again have you tried safemode?

[Robin S_]

A long shot - IIRC Acer cptrs use a proprietory screen at startup which masks the standard display which shows some of the steps as they happen; if that is the case it might be worth trying to turn off the Acer mask (sometimes done in the BIOS) and watching progress behind it - you might get some sort of error message displayed.
Do you have a functional config.sys/autoexec.bat? If so, try doing a step-by-step startup to see if that turns up something.

[sweetinnocence]

turned out that the hard drive was going bad, when i did the SAFE MODE thing, it straight away said "your hard drive has developed bad sectors" so i did a surface scan and fixed the errors to retrieve the data. After it fixed a couple of bad clusters, the beeps went away. Have since replaced the horrid Maxtor slim drive! (seen nothing but problems with the old Maxtor slims!)