MacBook Pro :: Boot Faliure, Alarm Sounding Constantly?

MBP 15 inch unibody. Just over 1 year old, has been in for service at least twice.First off, let me say that I am not with the box at the moment. Am not a Mac person and am trouble shooting this for my sis. It is her box and she is in a situation where tech support may be minimal and has no access to net.

So, she's at home and drops a file of papers quite hard on the MBP and it restarts on its own. It appears unharmed, no dings or screen problems. Restart is OK and all proceeds normally, she is able to work for several more hours etc etc. Then she packs it up and flies across 12 time zones.Gets in to hotel, gets MBP out and fires it up. While it is doing that, she unpacks and is *not* watching the screen (so we don't know if there was a mac start up sound or any messages). Coming back to it she sees a blue or grey screen, nothing else.

She reboots and this time she does not get the apple sound but instead she gets a beeping noise which appears to happen in time with a flash on the indicator light (the light which is usually "on" or "breathing"). The beeping is rather a low pitch and it is timed at about a second or so. It does not appear to be in any pattern. I heard it over the phone but did not think to ask from where it was coming.I called my Mac friend and he suggested a number of remedies.

Here is what we have tried:
1. Remove battery, try wall power only.
2. Remove wall power, try battery only.
3. Reset PRAM.
4. Safe boot.

None of the above helped.

Have *not* yet tried resetting PMU / SMC by taking out battery and removing wall power and pressing power button for 5 seconds. Have instructed her to do that next. (Time difference means that she is asleep now)While she can probably survive 1 day without the box, she absolutely needs it for the next two weeks. Is doing important training instruction for ministry of health or university or something.