Random Freeze and Beeps at Power-on

[GTifeld]

Hello Gang.

I have the above-listed model which I inherited from a friend who replaced it with a newer model. It came with Windows 7, but he upgraded to 10 before replacing it. Since I've had it, I've had an occasional problem with the display not recovering from the screen-saver after being idle for a while. It only happened once or twice, but I updated the video drivers and it seemed to be fine after that.

However, something bigger happened yesterday. While watching a video on Youtube, the video seemed to get stuck in mid-play, and the entire computer was frozen. The mouse and keyboard were both unresponsive and I couldn't even login remotely to shut it down. I had no choice but to do a hard reboot, which I did. When I turned it back on, The power button flashed amber and I heard a series of long beeps that repeated. I tried pulling the power cord, holding the power button down for 10 seconds, and tried again, but same problem. I eventually left it off for about an hour, tried again, and it worked. It's been working fine all day now, but clearly there's a problem.

Can anyone advise what specifically these symptoms point to? Drive? Motherboard? Etc.? I have no problem restoring back to Windows 7 if necessary,  but I'm thinking those beeps at power-up point to a hardware issue.

Thank you in advance for any input.

[Grzwacz]

Hello GTifeld

What is beep cadence? Here is HP Support information on beep error codes.

Motherboard is maybe good if you get beep error. 

Grzy

[GTifeld]

Hi Grzy. Thank you for your response.

I realized after the fact that I should have paid closer attention to the exact nature of the beeps. I will keep the link you gave me to refer to should it re-occur.

Thanks again. 

Regards,

--- Gary