D901C beeping randomly

My Clevo D901C has recently started randomly beeping while running.

Searching on Google and seems a few reports of similar but they all talk about a POST style beep with a pattern to the beep. This is just single, short beeps. Sometimes may be every few seconds, sometimes may not beep all day.

When I was first sure it was the laptop and opened Cupid monitor it lead me to think it may be HDD temperature related but since it is now doing it while all temps are low (all under 50) I don't think that was related.

Running WinXP32 with SP3. Have Ubuntu installed as well I can try some testing in (but beeps are so intermittent it may be hard to be sure.) Having fans on full doesn't cure it. Not sure if I have the correct keyboard bios or not but the fact it has only just started doing it, after being fine for many many months, doesn't suggest it's that.

Any ideas? Could it be a Windows thing, rather than hardware thing?

 

I've run into this before with XP when I used the default audio drivers on some systems rather than installing the manufacturers drivers. The beep was usually a piece of software trying to notify me of something that was inconsequential and not readily noticeable.

 

If you get the beeps in Ubuntu as well then it means the BIOS is trying to tell you something. A bad fan perhaps?

 

Haven't noticed anything through the headphone output so doubt it's audio card related.

When I last cleaned the thing a few months ago I did notice one of the fans seem to spin slightly less freely than the others so is a possibility. Time for a clean again anyway! But I'll do that when I'm at work and got better facilities and equipment around me to do it with.

 

Well seems to be behaving itself today but I did give it a bit of a knock moving it yesterday. Either a loose connection somewhere or it may of been the fan getting a little jammed and this freed it (briefly)...

 

OK just cleaned out the fans, which seemed pretty decent, and reset the keyboard (which was slightly off on the edge connector) but it is still beeping happily away! Please give me some ideas of what else to try people! Going to boot into Linux and see if it goes off again this evening...

 

OK so beeped while restarting before even getting into the log-in screen for Ubuntu Studio so definitely got to be hardware!

 

This has been a problem before and if I am correct, it is a motherboard bus issue between the keyboard and fan controller. Hit FN+1 together to toggle the fans to full speed. This will cause the fan controller to stop controlling the fans since they are constantly at full speed and the beeping should stop. If it the continues while the fans are at full speed, then I have no idea what could be wrong.

There is a bios update to the keyboard/fan firmware which fixes the problem and it can be found here.

 

Did try and reply to this days ago but got Database Error and then couldn't even view the threads.

Anyway had tried Fn+1 before and beeping continued with fans at full speed.

It has beeped again since the clean, although it didn't much for a while after the initial one and booting into Linux. But it definitely does still exist.

Will check BIOS and Keyboard driver versions.

Personally think it's a connection issue somewhere as I do transport the laptop a lot and it has seemed to be resolved by giving it a knock in the past (eg when moving it from bedroom to the light when it's playing up.)

 

Sorry for huge delay between posts.

Still beeping but so sporadically it's hard to do much about. May not beep for a couple of days then it may beep every few seconds all night, driving me wild.

Today I have finally checked BIOS and KBC. Both seem latest (.22 BIOS, 13N KBC) My keyboard has the Vista style key (circled Windows key) is the N version correct?

Today took out battery, hard drive and DVD and replaced to try and rule out intermittent connections there. Fingers crossed...

 

OK strange as it may sound I am now 90% sure it is actually the hard drive itself beeping (didn't know they could.) Quite worrying.

To get to this conclusion I took keyboard off to check connectors that had given me trouble when I first bought the machine (display issues solved with a bodge of little piece of foam on top of them) and this allowed me to see that the hard drive light was flashing at every beep, although so quickly it usually isn't visible when the cover is on top.

Open the hard drive compartment and beep gets louder, unscrew the hard drive and try and hear if it is coming from it or something underneath. As far as I can tell it's coming from the hard drive itself.

HDD is a WD Scorpio Black 320GB 2.5" drive.


Any ideas?


I'm going to try moving it to under the battery for now. Often going weeks without beeps at the moment so may take a while to see if it's made any difference...

 

OK seems I'm not the only person who has had this with this drive, including Mac owner. This thread mentions a remedy for PC but no link, currently searching WD site but if somebody knows how to navigate their site better than me I would appreciate a link

WD Scorpio Black 7200RPM Hard Drive WD3200BEKT - MacRumors Forums