BIOS/POST beeps, but everything seems fine...

[davidhbrown]

Here's an interesting one... I'm getting the long-short-short beep pattern at POST -- but so far as I can tell, everything is fine. I did read the web page which says it's either a DIMM issue, video card, or system board. But all of these seem fine; I haven't changed any internal hardware.

I get the same beep pattern whether docked or undocked; with battery and AC, with just battery (undocked only, of course), and with just AC.

The System Toolbox diagnostics all pass except for the serial port either fail or aren't runnable. But they of course aren't part of the system itself, just the dock, so that seems like it has to be a separate issue. I reran the system board tests undocked; no com port; everything passed.

RAM still shows the 4096MB from Lenovo; in addition to System Toolbox, I noticed a Windows Memory Test that seemed to appear when I set up Windows 7 Beta on its own partition (used msconfig to select between them at boot). It ran fine, too.

The bootable PC Doctor utility from the downloaded image locks up the computer when it's just loading the test for the Conexant Smart Modem Interrupt, but that tests okay when booted to Windows and I was able to send a fax, so I suspect an error in the copy I burned to CD.

Is there *any* way to figure out exactly what it is that has the BIOS/POST worried? Any other thoughts? I makes me nervous, honestly...

[davidhbrown]

Update: technician just replaced the system board; same beep pattern persists. Guess it has to be something that plugs in to it, then... (edit:) she did try each DIMM individually and swapped; also powered up with no hard drive. Beeps persist.

[davidhbrown]

Turned out it was the Intel TurboMemory module. The technician was very happy not to have had to replace the LCD cable which would have been her next step...

[Kamika007z]

Interesting... thank you for following up!