Hi guys. I have an old pentium 120, 32mb ram I'm fixing up to donate to the Salvos. Its an old machine I've had here for ages so I formatted the drive and reinstalled win98 on it.
I turn it on and it does the memory count, then you wait a few minutes and it comes up with the error hard disk fail (20), press F1 to continue. I press F1 and it loads windows normally.
The drive is configured properly in the Bios, cable etc is all fine. The only thing I notice missing is the beep, there isnt one. It can't be the drive as I've tried a couple that I know are ok and this one loads and works ok once you hit F1.
Any ideas?

I upgraded an old Vectra with a slot 1 Pentium 3 450 mHz CPU to a 1.4 Gig Celeron based on a slot 1 adapter. This is far beyond what the Vectra manual said I could do but in searching I found someone else who had done it.

The only thing is after the BIOS POST it tells me the microcode of the CPU is not recognized: Press F1 to continue. So I do & have a very fast Vectra. Pressing F1 has just become part of my boot routine.

Don't know if this relates but I found it at least coincidental.

Oh deary me, you haven't given us all the information, 1 out of 10 - should know better.... hold out your hand!

What's your BIOS? What model Vectra?

The only BIOS I know of that uses no beeps is the IBM one meaning loose card, a short or (bless you IBM) a power failure.

However a BIOS problem can cause irregular/missing beeps (btw the internal speaker does work I assume?).

BIOS BEEPY NOISES:

AMI http://www.computerhope.com/beep.htm#3 OR http://www.computercraft.com/docs/beeps.shtml

AWARD http://www.computerhope.com/beep.htm#4 OR http://bioscentral.com/beepcodes/awardbeep.htm

IBM http://www.computerhope.com/beep.htm#5 OR http://bioscentral.com/beepcodes/ibmbeep.htm

Macintosh http://www.computerhope.com/beep.htm#6

Pheonix http://www.computerhope.com/beep.htm#7 OR http://bioscentral.com/beepcodes/phoenixbeep.htm

1. The first step of POST is the testing of the Power Supply to ensure that it is turned on and that it releases its reset signal.
2. CPU must exit the reset status mode and thereafter be able to execute instructions.
3. BIOS must be have readable.
4. BIOS checksum must be valid, meaning that it must be readable.
5. CMOS be accessible for reading.
6. CMOS checksum must be valid, meaning that it must be readable.
7. CPU must be able to read all forms of memory such as the memory controller, memory bus, and memory module.
8. The first 64KB of memory must be operational and have the capability to be read and written to and from, and capable of containing the POST code.
9. I/O bus / controller must be accessible.
10. I/O bus must be able to write / read from the video subsystem and be able to read all video RAM.

Try here:
http://www.computerhope.com/beep.htm

I like Tassie Devils (btw wtf does 'tassie' mean?) workaround, you could get one of those nodding bird things that you find in charity shops to peck the relevant function key on bootup. It'd look cool and free up your time.

I'm outta here dudes

PS re last paragraph, replace Tassie Devil with Jephree..... Ooops... well, It's like 3 am here, and I'm tired and ...... cue slow fade

My guess is that it is actually the hard disk configuration in the BIOS. Go back and have a look at the settings (Cylinders, Heads and Sectors) and try each of the different values in the last column - you'll get three or four choices probably (Normal, Large, LBA or Auto). If that value isn't right, it will often kick up a fuss that it can't accurately use the hard disk. By pressing F1, you're forcing the PC to just try its best and see what happens!