What do the beeps mean?

[hdtammie]

my hp desktop was running great the other day it shut down as if I had done it.. I've since tried to bring it back up all I get are beeps it did start once and ran for about 10 minutes before shutting down. now beeps is all I get.. fans are running as well as lights. what do the beeps mean? system is less than 2 years old running xp

 

[TheViper]

Describe the beeps. As in length and pauses between.

the beeps are error codes from the BIOS. We can narrow down the problem a little if we know which beeps you are getting.