Random bios style single beep while in windows. Help please!

Hello, 

Have you tried updating BIOS?

Does the  system saves Date and time accurately ?

Can you try running diagnostics from f12 menu.

Awaiting your reply.

Hello Hemalatha, I have upgraded to all the new BIOS versions, the problem was present in every version, I am now on version A11. I have not tested the latest version A13 thoroughly (A 12 was skipped)  because on this version the laptop refuses to shut down completely when using the shut down option in windows, only when using the hibernate option the laptop stops completely, so definitely something odd there too. I will try A 13 again to see if the beep is ocuring.

The system keeps time and date accurately as far as I can tell, windows did not popped any notifications notifying that the time or date are going out of sink, but it is set to automatically synchronize with a time server. I won't use this option in the future to see if the time goes out of sync.

Running the diagnostics doesn't find any problems, not even in the extended mode.

Okay. Do let me know if the beep is heard on A13 bios.

If it still persist its the motherboard which is at fault. 

Will wait for your reply as per that we will proceed further.

Hello, thank you for taking interest in this issue.So far so good, the A13 BIOS works ok and shuts down the laptop normally which is a relief.

As for the beep it occurred today and something curious happened just a split second before, a black command window appeared that had the title taskeng.exe and disappeared quickly and then I heard the beep. This is the first time I have seen the command window, doing who knows what, correlated with the strange motherboard beeping.

I immediately searched on what taskeng does and I found out that it has to do with scheduled tasks, but I didn't schedule any tasks so I have downloaded some antispyware and antimalware software to check for any malicious software, some threats were detected on the system and deleted. My antivirus did not detect anything wrong which is why I did not took into consideration that this could be a malicious software problem.

Now I'm waiting to see if this has resolved the issue.

Ah ok. Do let me know how it goes. ^HP

Hello, 

Hope this are fine with your machine. Any beeps so far ?

Regards

The short beep is still present and as random as ever. Got one yesterday at about  1 pm and one today at 9:05 pm. There is still no error or warning in the event log at the specified times.

I really do hope it's not the motherboard at fault because it was replaced once already. I have run the preboot ePSA diagnostics tests again, but everything still checks out ok. Any other diagnostics I can run besides ePSA?

Could this actually be due to the Windows 8.1 installation having some bugs or because it was not installed correctly for some reason? I have installed all the recommended updates for windows as well, but the beep problem never went away. 

Hi bpetre & hema, I have an Alienware 17 and had the exact same issue. From you conversation, it seems to be an HDD problem.  I have a Seagate 500GB/8GB hybrid drive installed by stock and an extra WD 1TB blue drive added by myself. Does any of you can explain a little bit more on this issue so that I can decide which drive is causing the problem.

For you reference, it happened four times last night, there was a half-minute gap between the first three beeps, and then the fourth beep came 5 minutes later.

Hello, I'm not an expert, but something simple you could try is to disable in device manager the second hard drive, if the disable option is available(not grayed out), and listen for the beeping for a day or two while the drive is disabled. Also was the beeping present before the second hard drive was installed ?  

Thank you bpetre for your advice. It happened again today and I think it is the stock seagate SSHD drive which is also the system drive, because the other drive was not in use or spnning at the time.

I then performed a thorough disk error checking using the Windows stock tool and it turns out both drives are clean. Did you happen to do that before replacing your drive and was there any bad sector on your hard drive?

Also, I'm interested to know how lound was the beeps you heard. I asked this because mine sounds quite week and could be easily ignored if the enviroment is not quite. I'm not sure if it is the same thing.

There were no bad sectors on my drives, I've checked with windows and a couple of other error detecting programs including the seagate Seatools diagnostic tool.

The beeping was quite loud, exactly like a bios error warning which you can hear on most computers when something goes bad.

Thanks! My laptop didn't beep so loudly, so I assume this may be a difference issue.

Hi gaxieo,

The current thread refers to a Precision machine.

Hence, please start a new thread, include a detailed description of the issue, possible screenshots and the exact system model and BIOS version. We can then help find any possible resolution.