A beep during PC boot up explain the nature of the issue with the PC hardware. Sometimes if a PC is not booting at all but you only hear beep sound, a close attention to it indicates that they appear in a  sequence of short and long beeps. A short beep is one with duration of 1 second and long one is the one with a duration of 3-4 seconds. These beep sequence is essential to be well deciphered to identify the kind of problem the PC is experiencing and most of the time it helps in fixing the issue. This tutorial helps you in identifying the meaning of different beeps in various popular BIOS.

AMI BIOS Beep Codes
Code                Description

1 Short Beep     System OK
2 Short Beeps   Parity error in the first 64 KB of memory
3 Short Beeps   Memory failure in the first 64 KB
4 Short Beeps   Memory failure in the first 64 KB Operational of memory
or Timer 1 on the motherboard is not functioning
5 Short Beeps   The CPU on the motherboard generated an error
6 Short Beeps   The keyboard controller may be bad. The BIOS cannot switch to protected mode
7 Short Beeps   The CPU generated an exception interrupt
8 Short Beeps   The system video adapter is either missing, or its memory is faulty
9 Short Beeps   The ROM checksum value does not match the value encoded in the BIOS
10 Short Beeps The shutdown register for CMOS RAM failed
11 Short Beeps The external cache is faulty
1 Long, 3 Short Beeps    Memory Problems
1 Long, 8 Short Beeps    Video Card Problems

Phoenix BIOS Beep Codes
Note – Phoenix BIOS emits three sets of beeps, separated by a brief pause.

Code Description
1-1-3 CMOS read/write failure
1-1-4 ROM BIOS checksum error
1-2-1 Programmable interval timer failure
1-2-2 DMA initialisation failure
1-2-3 DMA page register read/write failure
1-3-1 RAM refresh verification failure
1-3-3 First 64k RAM chip or data line failure
1-3-4 First 64k RAM odd/even logic failure
1-4-1 Address line failure first 64k RAM
1-4-2 Parity failure first 64k RAM
2-_-_ Faulty Memory
3-1-_ Faulty Motherboard
3-2-4 Keyboard controller Test failure
3-3-4 Screen initialisation failure
3-4-1 Screen retrace test failure
3-4-2 Search for video ROM in progress
4-2-1 Timer tick interrupt in progress or failure
4-2-2 Shutdown test in progress or failure
4-2-3 Gate A20 failure
4-2-4 Unexpected interrupt in protected mode
4-3-1 RAM test in progress or failure>ffffh
4-3-2 Faulty Motherboard
4-3-3 Interval timer channel 2 test or failure
4-3-4 Time of Day clock test failure
4-4-1 Serial port test or failure
4-4-2 Parallel port test or failure
4-4-3 Math coprocessor test or failure
Low 1-1-2 System Board select failure
Low 1-1-3 Extended CMOS RAM failure

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