It is a AMI bios. I would make sure take out the video card and use canned air to blow out the card edge connector, along with all others, including the RAM. Put everything together without the case cover on to allow you to see if it boots to show video. If not, your Video card most likely went bad. You can try using a different monitor to rule out a bad flatscreen or cable.
Thanks for all the help on this. I have made some significant progress. By detaching all peripheral devices other than mouse, keyboard and monitor I'm down from many beeps to only two. I now get the ACER splash screen but still no message on what to hit to get to BIOS setup, so something still is wrong. I have determined that I have AMI BIOS and I can hit del to get to the BIOS setup.
Surprisingly, one possible culprit is the USB receiver for my wireless mouse and keyboard. When I remove the receiver and use a wired mouse I'm down to one opening beep and I think I've always had that. I have other USB receivers on other computers so I swapped them to see if it was a bad receiver and I get the same additional couple of beeps.
So my beeps are becoming fewer and I think I've narrowed the problem to external hardware. I'm going to pause my work on this for a couple of days due to other needs but will return. I can work fine in Windows. I'll report back in a few days with any additional information.
Again, thanks for your help.
Two beeps from an AMI BIOS indicate a RAM problem.
If you have two sticks of RAM try removing one of them then try to boot up again. If you still get two beeps then put the stick of RAM back in and remove the other one, try and boot again.
You can also run Memtest - boot it from a USB drive and test https://www.memtest86.com/
Maybe I'm concerned over nothing. Everything is working fine. My main concern is that the beeps started following my W10 reinstall. I have a SSD boot drive, two additional internal data drives, and three external USB drives. I don't want to take my computer and all USB HDDs to the shop when things are working as intended. Unless I get strong advice otherwise I think I'll just live with the beeps. I posted here in case some guru has the interpretation skills to diagnose the reason for the beeps.
FWIW I have made a record of the beep patterns:
S = Staccato (very short)
Long = still short but longer than S
Box = the on/off button on my desktop computer
*********************************************************
Shut down at box, restart from box (no mouse) = no beeps
Shut down with mouse, restart from box = one long beep
Restart using mouse only (no box button) = one S + one long
ADD ONLY 4TB USB HDD
Start from box = one long, pause, then 2 long
Restart using mouse = one S + 3 long
ADD ONLY 1 TB USB DRIVE
Restart using mouse = S + Long + pause + long
Shut down with mouse, restart from box = 2 long
Shut down and restart from box = 2 long
ADD ONLY 2 TB USB DRIVE
Start from box w/o mouse = one long
Restart with mouse = S + 2 long
RESTART FROM BOX OR WITH MOUSE WITH EVERYTHING (3 USB drives) ATTACHED
One S + 2 long; pause, then one more long (4 beeps total!)
You should only have one short beep on a normal boot.
Some ideas:
- Do you get any beeps when you boot from a repair disk e.g. Windows 10 Recovery Tools - Bootable Rescue Disk If not, then you may have an odd Windows 10 software problem and could try a repair install.
- Have you got the latest BIOS version for your motherboard? Update if not. Also, remove the CMOS battery for a minute to reset the BIOS then load the BIOS defaults. You could also try re-flashing the BIOS with the same version in case you have a corrupted BIOS.
- Do you have integrated graphics on the motherboard? If so, remove the NVidia GPU and boot using the on-board graphics. If there are no beeps then you have a faulty NVidia GPU.
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