Hi members

My Acer TravelMate 290 laptop recently froze and when I tried to reboot it produced a long continuous monotone beep before the BIOs screen (which remained black). I repeatedly tried to switch it back on without it beeping and sometimes I was successful although soon afterwards it would either freeze or the screen would go black and the laptop would start beeping continuously again.

I don't know what the continous beep for my version of BIOS is because I am not sure what type BIOS I have (Award etc ?). This is all I can find from my hardware details:
Acer BIOS v1.4

and from a more detailed hardware profile:

BIOS:
Manufacturer ACER
Name Insyde Software MobilePRO BIOS Version 4.00.00
Release Date 20030804000000.000000+000
Version INSYDE - 1

I checked the TravelMate handbook and although they mention some beep codes they do not mention anything about a continuous beep.

Continuous beeps for Award-BIOS indicate video or RAM problem. As I have two RAMs of 256 each I first swapped them round. The laptop suddenly came to life but the black screen and the beeping would start again after a while. Removing one of the RAMs and just running it with one RAM stick seemed to fix everything (boots fine, no freezing after days of use). But I bought new memory and put it back on and although everything was fine the first day, the same problems started again. So I removed the new RAM and now it's fine again. Surely the new RAM can't be also problematic? I can't live on 256Mb RAM!

Could it be that the RAM slot is problematic rather than the RAM itself?

I should also add the my laptop lives in my kitchen and we often share our coffee... so..could it be the keyboard?

Any suggestions would be much appreciated

eleni