disaster narrowly averted

[calimac]

A few days ago our neighborhood had a planned power outage. The power company sent out notices that they'd be disconnecting us for work on a nearby street. They blocked that street off all day, so I hope they further informed its residents that they wouldn't be able to get out of their driveways.

So, before I left for the day, I turned my computer off. When I turned it back on afterwards, the light came on, the machine emitted three beeps, but nothing else happened. Uh-oh. Good thing that I've acquired a portable hard drive, a much more useful tool, methinks, than flash drives for backups. (Flash drives are more convenient for carrying files around between computers.)

What do the three beeps mean, anyway? They must be a message of some kind, and since computers don't write their own messages, somebody programmed them, they must mean something. But neither of the phone computer help services I consulted knew anything more than "your hard drive crashed."

It turned out it hadn't. Before trying to take it in, I disconnected everything, and then thought, I'd better dust this down. So I dusted the outside, and then opened up the case and dusted and blew off (compressed air) the inside. Then I disconnected the cables to the hard drive, cleaned everything there off, and reconnected them. (Knowing these on sight is as virtuoso as my knowledge of computer hardware gets.)

Then I tried plugging the power back in, and sure enough, it worked just fine. I saved both time and money. Disaster narrowly averted.

Comments

[barondave.livejournal.com]

I can't speak to your system specifically, but something like "three beeps" is probably in the ROM (hardware) and probably means something like, "I can't find an operating system to boot with", or "memory conflict".

And yes, compressed air is one of the things you should use before panicking. The other is an external boot disk.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

In the days of DOS and floppy drives, I knew how to make and use an external boot disk. Now I would have no idea either what to put on one, or how to make the computer recognize it.

[milwaukeesfs.livejournal.com]

Instructions for making either a bootable CD ROM or USB drive are easily available on line.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

1) Wariness factor over random computer instructions I find online: extreme.

2) My own ability to evaluate their honesty, relevance, and even comprehensibility: fairly low.

3) It's not that I couldn't find out, if I really wanted to. It's that I don't know it, whereas in a previous regime, I did.

[milwaukeesfs.livejournal.com]

Who said randomly? Depending on your OS or machine brand, they pretty much all have such instruction available. For example, Microsoft:

How to Create a Bootable CD-ROM - MSDN - Microsoft
msdn.microsoft.com/en.../ms932879(v=winembedded.5).aspx
Oct 18, 2006 – Bootable CD-ROMs allow you to boot and run a run-time image from a CD-ROM. Using the El Torito Bootable CD-ROM specification, a single ...

Create a bootable CD emergency repair disc for XP? - Microsoft ...
answers.microsoft.com/.../fc7b8e94-49ed-4f1e-962e-1abe5a3...Share
May 28, 2011 – Is it possible to create a bootable CD emergency repair disc for XP? The issue is CD vs floppy 1. create a bootable CD from an operable pc with ...
How can I make a MS-DOS Boot Disk on a CD/USB for flashing ...‎ - Jan 14, 2012
Creating A bootable CD‎ - Jan 16, 2011
Flashing BIOs - Bootable DOS CD?‎ - Jan 8, 2011
How do I create a Window's Vista boot CD‎ - Dec 23, 2009

More results from answers.microsoft.com »

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Official help websites! Worse and worse! I only visit those under conditions of absolute desperation.

[milwaukeesfs.livejournal.com]

OK, I laughed out loud at that reply. :)

[milwaukeesfs.livejournal.com]

As Barondave noted, "beep codes" are typically generated by the motherboard. You might be able to find a motherboard manual on line. Have you checked your onboard CMOS battery, which is a button cell that keeps data such as date/time alive when the system is disconnected from power? Needing a new battery is about the only thing I can think of that would cause a startup fault such as you describe if the system was shut down properly. Glad you were able to make a full recovery!