I hear NO BIOS BEEP sound at start-up (warm or cold) ---does this indicate a Motherboard or Power supply problem?--- isn’t ONE Beep normal? I have an OCTEK Rhino 9 097-007 motherboard. AWARD modular BIOS v 4.51PG ---ID : 1/16/97-i430HX_U8669-2A59Fo9C-00.-----BIOS has been flashed (successfully) to solve Y2K problem-these are the updated data. I am running Win 98,ver 1/Cyrix 6x86 CPU. For the last 6 weeks:I DO hear a short falling beep or whistling sound coming thru motherboard speaker after 5 min of inactivity----only once in any boot session. --- after any cold or warm restart. At the same time certain ini.- type settings change (size, color of icons,fonts)from old settings to current settings. It sounds like something may be powering down---(I have disabled all power management & screen savers & also in the BIOS.(Temporarily removing Modem & CPU fan does not eliminate beep.) (Altho I first suspected hard drive, I feel nothing when touching it--- Hard Drive is Fujitsu model no. MPC 3043, manu.Oct'98,inst. Oct '99) One week ago I replaced the dead mini-fan above CPU---CPU was very hot--- may have suffered heat damage ( at that time also added new Ram chips,Reinstalled Windows,did a thorough Scan Disk(surface,too),Defrag & latest Virus scan.) I only ask all this because I have been having many many Ilegal operations, & Fatal exceptions,type:0E 0028:Cxxxx especially on 'net(using Outlook Express &Internet Explorer) some Freeze-ups & spontaneous reboots. Sincere thanks for any help,Roark Hunnicutt

Roark, It is possible that when you flashed the BIOS that it did not load properly. Check and double check that you had the correct download for your version on the Award site. Check with them and be sure, problem is that unless you wrote down the original BIOS Id. # the flash may have changed it. Your other problems may come from problems with the Cyrix but most likely are the result of a lot of poorly written code in some web pages. These guys write the pages and post them with only a quick test and the results are often crap. Do the usual clean up of your Temporary Internet Files and Cookies, get rid of any old "ini" files for programs that you have removed and then run the System File Checker to look for corrupted or changed files that might be giving you a problem. The updated windows messaging must be loaded separately from your Win98 reload. If you still have problems e-mail me and I will try to help with a most frustrating problem.

Award beeps once when your memory is OK. Could be a faulty memory chip. Sounds like it with all the errors. Heat could have damaged it or static.

UPDATE :ANSWER:Beep sound from motherboard speaker was a notification beep --- after 5 min idle--- of automatic reset of Accessibility Options feature (probably enlarged type.) [Strangely, NO Accessibility features(such as enlarged type )were checked off,but the: --- 1)warning sound & 2) disable after 5 min idle boxes-- WERE checked.]