Beep with power off?

I get an intermittent (about every five minutes) short beep from the MB
with power to the PC off or when Windows is running. Is this the MB battery
saying its dying like a battery going dead in a smoke alarm?
Its an Intel D845HV MB, P4 1.8 with W2K and only a couple years old.
If I change the battery will I loose the BIOS settings or just the clock
setting?
Thanks,
Lou

"Lou" <no-spam DeleteThis @sonic.net> wrote in message
news:1015inkp6gkb6aa@corp.supernews.com...
 > I get an intermittent (about every five minutes) short beep from the MB
 > with power to the PC off or when Windows is running. Is this the MB
battery
 > saying its dying like a battery going dead in a smoke alarm?
 > Its an Intel D845HV MB, P4 1.8 with W2K and only a couple years old.
 > If I change the battery will I loose the BIOS settings or just the clock
 > setting?
 > Thanks,
 > Lou
 >
No idea why the beeping is going on. But changing the battery certainly
shouldn't lose the BIOS since that is strored in FLASH memory on newer
systems and in EPROM in older ones. You MAY lose the BIOS settings which are
stored in CMOS memory so you should make a note of what they are before
changing the battery but after changing a dozen or more of them I've found
that if I move quickly and don't fumble the swap that the capacitor bridged
across the circuit keeps it alive for quite a while. The clock will lose
sanity but that is pretty much of a non-issue.
--
John McGaw
[Knoxville, TN, USA]

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