Hi all,

I have an acer laptop 4 years old running xp. It has developed a hardware fault so that end of post I get 2 beeps and a message about a resource conflict.

Luckily I am told to press F1 to continue or F2 to enter bios. When I press F1 windows continues to load normally and then discovers new hardware the ethernet port which I try to install the drivers for.

Drivers fail to install no matter what I have tried to do, so I have disabled the ethernet port which stops windows xp from trying to install after each restart.

Returning the laptop to its factory condition makes no difference, it is definitely a hardware fault om the ethernet port in laptop which I can live with, wireless internet works fine

The annoying thing is the beeps at startup, can't see anything in a rather limited bios to disable the port, have tried to disable netowrk but no difference.

At least the laptop is working fine otherwise just the annoying beeps at startup and have to press F1 to load windows.

I know its definitely a hardware fault so would appreciate any ideas on how to fix it rather than having to get a new motherboard.

many thanks

martin