During startup, a desktop PC emits a series of short beeps, followed by a brief pause, and then repeats the pattern. The display remains blank. According to typical BIOS/UEFI beep-code conventions, what does this pattern MOST likely indicate?
The operating system is missing or corrupt on the boot drive.
The BIOS has detected a memory or motherboard fault.
The monitor is set to the wrong input source.
The system passed POST successfully and is booting normally.
A single short beep normally signals that POST completed successfully. When the system instead produces several short beeps that repeat after a pause, the BIOS is reporting a hardware error-commonly involving RAM or the motherboard-before video initialization. The exact fault depends on the vendor's beep chart, but repeating short beeps never indicate a successful POST.
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