• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

You’ll hear three other beep sequences on most PCs (although they’re not officially beep codes). At the end of a successful POST, the PC produces one or two short beeps, simply to inform you that all is well. Most systems make a rather strange noise when the RAM is missing or very seriously damaged. Unlike traditional beep codes, this code repeats until you shut off the system. Finally, your speaker might make beeps for reasons that aren’t POST or boot related. One of the more common is a series of short beeps after the system’s been running for a while. That’s a CPU alarm telling you the CPU is approaching its high heat limit.

* * *

NOTE Some newer motherboards can also talk to you if there is a problem during POST. To use this feature, all that is normally required is to plug a pair of speakers or headphones into the onboard sound card.

Text Errors

After the video has tested okay, any POST errors display on the screen as text errors. If you get a text error, the problem is usually, but not always, self-explanatory (Figure 7-29). Text errors are far more useful than beep codes, because you can simply read the screen to determine the bad device.

Figure 7-29 POST text error messages

POST Cards

Beep codes, numeric codes, and text error codes, although helpful, can sometimes be misleading. Worse than that, an inoperative device can sometimes disrupt the POST, forcing the machine into an endless loop. This causes the PC to act dead—no beeps and nothing on the screen. In this case, you need a device called a POST card, to monitor the POST and identify which piece of hardware is causing the trouble.

POST cards are simple cards that snap into expansion slots on your system. A small, two-character light-emitting diode (LED) readout on the card indicates what device the POST is currently testing (Figure 7-30). The documentation that comes with the POST card tells you what the codes mean. BIOS makers also provide this information on their Web sites. Manufacturers make POST cards for all types of desktop PCs. POST cards work with any BIOS, but you need to know the type of BIOS you have so you can interpret the readout properly.

Figure 7-30 POST card in action

I usually only pull out a POST card when the usual POST errors fail to appear. When a computer provides a beep or text error code that doesn’t make sense, or your machine keeps locking up, some device has stalled the POST. Because the POST card tells you which device is being tested, the frozen system stays at that point in the POST, and the error stays on the POST card’s readout.

Many companies sell POST cards today, with prices ranging from the affordable to the outrageous. Spend the absolute least amount of money you can. The more expensive cards add bells and whistles you do not need, such as diagnostic software and voltmeters.

Using a POST card is straightforward. Simply power down the PC, install the POST card in any unused slot, and turn the PC back on. As you watch the POST display, notice the hexadecimal readouts and refer to them as the POST progresses. Notice how quickly they change. If you get an “FF” or “00,” that means the POST is over and everything passed—time to check the operating system. If a device stalls the POST, however, the POST card displays an error code. That’s the problem device! Good technicians often memorize a dozen or more POST codes because it’s much faster than looking them up in a book.

So you got a beep code, a text error code, or a POST error. Now what do you do with that knowledge? Remember that a POST error does not fix the computer; it only tells you where to look. You then have to know how to deal with that bad or improperly configured component. If you use a POST card, for example, and it hangs at the “Initializing Floppy Drive” test, you’d better know how to work on a floppy drive.

Sometimes the POST card returns a bizarre or confusing error code. What device do you point at when you get a “CMOS shutdown register read/write error” beep code from