Recently I had some trouble with a motherboard that uses AwardBIOS. The system was verbosely beeping, but I could not find a reference for AwardBIOS beep codes. I fancy myself an avid googler, but the information persisted to allude me. You are probably thinking, "just try AwardBIOS' homepage." And, I did try that., This is the juicy nugget of knowledge that the manufacturer bestowed upon me. And I quote...

Beep
Currently the only beep code indicates that a video error has occurred and the BIOS
cannot initialize the video screen to display any additional information. This beep code
consists of a single long beep followed by two short beeps. Any other beeps are probably
a RAM problem.

This was less than helpful, and my patience was running thin. I was using all working components from another computer, and I was sure that beep codes were not arbitrarily assigned randomly for each motherboard. Thus, there must be some pattern to the babbling PC speaker in my computer, and that pattern must be documented somewhere. After returning from the detour to uselessville in AwardBIOS Land, I continued to fruitlessly scour the Internet. Fruitless until...I sought out the owner's manual for a specific motherboard which uses AwardBIOS. Jackpot! Buried deep in the manual was a section titled "Beep Codes". Luckily motherboard manufactures document components better than the manufacturers of the components. At least such is the case with AwardBIOS.

However, I have digressed enough. Without further hesitation I present AwardBIOS Beep Codes, in all their majesty.

AwardBIOS Beep Codes
1 short: System boots successfully
2 short: CMOS setting error
1 long 1 short: DRAM or M/B error
1 long 2 short: Monitor or display card error
1 long 3 short: Keyboard error
1 long 9 short: BIOS ROM error
Continuous long beeps: DRAM error
Continuous short beeps: Power error

UPDATE: I have recently learned that AwardBIOS beep codes are difficult to find because motherboard manufactures customize the bios ot the point of erroding standards. Thus, Award does not even publish the base specifications for beep codes. I learned this in an e-mail from a considerate reader. Here is their e-mail:

Dear Anthony;

I came across your article while researching beep codes and I thought that I'd let you know another piece of information that I found in my research.

I work as tech support for a small private school and try to keep old equipment running for students to use with old educational software. I was just checking a custom-built PII system that has Award BIOS and, after replacing a dead CMOS battery I got one long and three short beeps after exiting the CMOS setup. This error seemed to reflect a video error (no display for me--came back after another reboot) and not what the chart that you gave indicated for the keyboard.

I found this elsewhere on the web that seems to make sense in my case:

"Award BIOS Post Codes

Unfortunately there are many versions of the Award BIOS, and they are supported not by one company, but by the motherboard maker. Award's website states "Award Software software products are sold to a board or system manufacturer ("hardware vendor"), who customizes them further before selling the system. Award Software cannot supply upgrades for a BIOS that has been subsequently modified by hardware vendors."

http://www.pchell.com/hardware/beepcodes.shtml

Sincerely,
Lorraine Peter

If you have comments or questions, you can contact me at anthony@hildoersystems.com.