I tried activating the speaker and installing beep as suggested. I also ran a Google search and found that the pcspkr was indeed blacklisted on Ubuntu 12.04. I edited /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf and remmed out "blacklist pcspkr" by placing a '#' preceeding this line of code. I rebooted and ran my demo with NSBeep(), but still didn't hear anything. I have an hp Pavilion p7-1220 and have not taken the cover off of it yet, so I don't really know if it has a speaker or not. I am using two external USB Altec Lansing speakers set to analog that work fine. Your post indicates running the beep.h to test it; I am unsure how to do this. I am unable to open the file to read it and see no other documentation of how to run a test of the header. It's not the end of the world if I don't get this working, but will keep trying. Thanks for the information and suggestions.