Irregular beeping noise heard at Startup... Please help?

At first I thought it was a POST error, but the length and amount of beeps is different every time I boot up. Once in a rare while, it won't even beep at all when it boots up. It's really loud and annoying and sounds like it's coming from the onboard speaker. Before this was a problem, it used to make the same sound when I was holding down a key on the keyboard during bootup. Any idea how I can get rid of these beeps? (My laptop has also been taking an unusually long time to boot up, although I'm not sure if these problems are related.)
Your help is greatly appreciated!

Thanks,
Janis

(PS This is a laptop Acer Aspire 5735, if that helps at all.)

 

I don't know so much about these beeping problems but there probably gonna ask you to remove one of the ram sticks if you have two, reboot and see if there's any change, then try each ram stick one at a time. Are there any error messages displayed at the time of the beeping? Does it say anything like press F1 , F2 to continue?

 

No, it boots up normally, I don't have to press anything on the keyboard.
I've never opened up a laptop before, so here goes nothing...

 

You say the beeping sounds like a keyboard beep, and it is irregular and random?

I suspect you have either a partially stuck key or a faulty keyboard.

This may sound strange, but try booting the laptop up upside down.

 

Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's a stuck key too. I am trying to remember a Windows utility that allows you to press all the keys to make sure they work correctly. Does anyone know what I'm talking about? I used it in Windows 2000, hopefully Vista has it? It should tell me which key is stuck.

 

Too bad you couldn't just unhook/disable the keyboard like you can with a desk top, use a USB keyboard and see if the problem remains. Then you'd know if it was a stuck button.