Inexplicable Sound

Can you reckon wherein the laptop the noise is coming from? My old old (probably not that old to most people) laptop made a noise whilst charging when the battery started to die, even while it was sleeping / hibernating. I have no idea why, but it was pretty annoying. I thought my laptop was haunted with the ghosts of my dead desktops...

It's the government taking snapshots of you.

Hard disk drive parking?

It might have difficulty parallel parking. Lord knows most people do.

No trouble parallel parking. It's a male hard disk.

It could be the hard drive getting ready to fail. I had one that would click now and then before it failed. Try using scan disk and error checking to see if they find any problems.

Computers. Instead of buying from KrisDel™, go a bit more up-market...

Together with one or two other exceptions, that's the best advice I've received so far. Don't stop now! :-))

It's water draining from your shower in the bathroom.

I don't know if it's the same sound, but when my computer is checking the optical drive, (for whatever reason), it's fairly loud compared to the other internal sounds.

That I recognize. Quite different.

Check your event logging file to see if you can find a concurrent event logged when you hear the sound....

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-vista/Open-Event-Viewer

I think the first thing that needs to be answered is; is it a "Windows" or computer sound that is coming through the audio stream and speakers of the system, or is it a sound being caused by some physical event? Does the sound still appear if you mute the audio/speakers?

Tom D.

I have a cheap set of speakers that constantly pick up EM noise. The amp is powered via a USB port, so I'm not surprised that this happens. What comes out of the speakers sounds like the clicks, whines and pops from the baby monitor in the movie Signs.

This is not likely the cause of europium's noise, but it sounds (did I just make a pun?) like what you are describing.

Plug in a set of headphones and see if you can catch it happening while using the computer, that way you can isolate if it is mechanical or digital. I suggest the soft rubber sound isolateing in ear ones or active sound cancelling so you can be more sure if it is digital...only problem is if you don't hear it it could be a false negative because you can't hear the mechanical noises.

_{and be careful with crisdel products...quality depends on the lager or bitter quantity of the maker!}

Drew K

Come to think of it, for the past three days I've just left my earbuds plugged in the computer but without wearing them. Unplugged them early last night and later heard the sound again. Don't recall hearing it at all the previous three days and so I suspect it is coming through the audio subsystem. The sound is *very* much like (if not completely identical to) the sound that is played which signals a visitor has entered or left a chatroom. If you've ever been in a chatroom, you know exactly what I mean.

I use kaspersky antivirus and trust it more than most, I would get that or another one that comes recommended by people who know what they are doing and scan the computer. It could be your computer indicating transmission of data to an online program.

I doubt any hacker worth their name would program in a noise that did that but it could be your computer making the noise in response to the action or it could be mal-ware, spy-ware or just bloat-ware reporting your browsing to it's master so they can make money sending you target advertising.

Drew K

Sometimes I don't turn off my computer for days, and a lot of open tabs build up in the browsers. Recently I heard a sound (from the speakers) that might fit your description, that seemed to happen every 10 min or so. I started closing tabs, and when I closed the one for JimmyJohns sandwiches (where I had placed an online order several days earlier) the sound went away. My completely uneducated guess is that their server was sending out a 'reminder', as a way to lighten the load.

You should re-boot every day.

It helps get rid of all the juck files that accumulate and slow things down.

I have heard that before on websites that auto-refresh to update themselves, I think some refresh to change the ads.

Drew K

Kris has taught his friends that the computer is safe place to store their nuts. Occationally they drop one.

There are lots of tools in linux to figure out what's going on, but I have no idea what they are in windows.

I had issues in the past where the machine would run like crazy (making noise) when I wasn't doing anything, but that was usually a 'background' process that was running automatically on my behalf. Occasional mysterious processes have been identified, but according to the savvy geeks, computers just do this. Mysteries are simply chalked up as 'mysteries'. Evidently it's part of the cpu allure.

Too bad the sound is irregular and only once a day, otherwise you could nab it with an external audio recorder and figure out by replay exactly what kind of noise it is. If you've confirmed that Windows sounds are off at the time, though, it must be a machine sound, not something coming through the speakers.

If you really suspect an intruder, try disconnecting or disabling wireless internet when you're not using it. If the sound is not intruder-related, you should eventually get a data point when no internet connection is available, thereby ruling out intruder as a cause. There should also be a tool on the cpu, to allow you to confirm that no connection was made at the time of the sound.

Might be this little fella:

I traced your IP address back and entered your system through port 16454. I discovered your computer has a nasty bug making those sounds.

For a small fee, I will eradicate it for you.

This is what I found :

HELL, no! You can have the damn 'puter, I'm keepin' the bug!

Turn up the radio up or, the hearing aid down.

I have also been hearing sounds very much like you describe. I haven't been wearing ear buds.

I noticed the sounds starting about a week ago. This is a new Acer laptop with Windows 8. Are you also running Windows 8?

Win7 Pro 64

Here's your problem, you need to get Windows 8 32-bit! It's only the best operating system out there! Make sure you get the 32-bit though, 64 is too many. Too many bits.

Gots me a sekint puter, a Pentum Too. Kin I split th' 64 betwix th' two, 32/32 like an' mult...multi..? That? Gots a Sin Clair zx81, too. 56/8?

Maybe your hearing this. Sound a hard drive could make.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9eMWG3fwiEU

There might be something in this thread that's relevant.

http://cr4.globalspec.com/thread/44421

It's all those electrons bumping together as they skid to a stop to reverse direction.

And eventually they pour out an unused USB port onto the floor, kinda like the shower head.

Get used to it. An average computer only uses something like 1% of its consumed power to do usefull (...well, not totally useless) things, like what you tell it to. Anyway refresh your important data backups, and then have your HDD and little cpu and mobo blowers checked for noices. It may also be some retarded software trying to make calls through your modem or using your camera without asking for your permission, in which case beware, big brother is watching you. S.M.

The best way to thwart the secret use of your camera by big brother is to put a small piece of black tape over the camera , if it is built into the monitor.The microphone can be disabled by inserting a blank mike jack into the microphone socket.

Now all you have to worry about is the bouncing of laser off of the window panes to capture audio,and infrared surveillance of the house, and the Gov using your land line telephone as a listening device(it can be done with phone still on cradle). Unplug your land lines when not is use,or run them through a dry-contact relay with shunt on N.O. contacts.

Now, put on your foil lined hat,copper mesh shoes,chain mail suit and gloves,decoder ring, and make sure to adjust your rabbit ears for best reception.( A fractal antenna is better, but this is being done on the cheap).

Seriously, though, I had a similar sound drive me nuts, it turned out to be a cell phone with a camera that would randomly snap pictures.A slight vibration in the the room would set it off.It would only do it once, so it was very hard to locate.It was in a wall charger in the next room, but due to freak acoustics, sounded like it was closer.

The internal chip was bad, and I just replaced the phone.

Good Luck.

If Big Brother is watching me, he must be very, very bored.

Besides, I'm not sitting on any oil reserves, and that other thing doesn't count.

Could it just be an alert sound, like the sound that can be set to play when an e-mail arrives. Try muting the volume control for a while to determine if it is mechanical or audio.

My laptop makes that sound just as the cooling fan kicks in. Yours is speaker related, so not much help.

cnc

singing..... : "I always feel like.... somebody's watchin meeeeeee.."

"And I have no Privacy"

"Whoa oa oa"

C'mon, you're just jealous because your life isn't interesting enough to warrant Big Bo's attention. Fess up, Bubba.

Many people have reported strange sounds coming from Ethernet ports/cards.

It may be related to load on the system/port/power supply. I have heard capacitors make strange noises when loads change.

Using some utility program, like 'CCleaner', check and temporarily disable all the contents of "start" box or window. The 'Start' box is where you can find /see almost all programs that are automatically loaded and pre-scheduled to run, like an autoexecute commands once the computer is turned ON. Most of the loaded programs may run automatic program updates, computer maintenance routines, virus updates, etc., which are mostly configured to run while your system is idling or on standby. At times even ther mouse, depending on how it was configured, will have some sounds associated to or with certain mouse actions like emptying the wastebasket...

Good luck!

You say you hardly chat at all, but you admit to chatting. Perhaps whatever program you use to chat is running in a reduced window, and that is what you hear. Check the task-bar at the bottom of your screen to see if this is true. If it is, then just close the program. It may have a setting that turns it on when windows starts, and if this is what your problem is, then change that setting.

If it is NOT coming through the sound system, it is most likely from the hard drive. It could be a benign sound from some normal activity like the heads parking or an internal S.M.A.R.T. test.

It could also be from the drive retrying or reallocating a misread sector. This would be a sign that the drive is getting old and may fail sometime soon. I've had several drives fail after "zip-click" sounds started. On one laptop the sound started to occur about once week. After several weeks it increased to once a day, then once an hour, then the HDD was dead. I suspected the drive might be going bad and fortunately created a full backup one day prior to complete failure.

Those were my Windows days (pre 2008) and I didn't know about the internal HDD SMART function. Now I run only Linux OSs on everything and have found some useful tools to monitor HDD health.

I suggest you research and use Smartmontools to periodically check the health of your HDD. I'm only familiar with the Linux version but there also seems to be a Windows version. Watch for ANY sector relocation. The drive MAY run fine for a long time with a small number of bad sectors, but at some point the bad sectors will grow exponentially and your drive will fail.

Regular data backup and the occasional SMART checkup should make future HDD meltdowns relatively painless. Good luck!

Its the Terminator, Machines are taking over the world..........Oh I'll be Baaaaack!

If your system is like mine, my cellphone will cause a pre call interference in my speakers. Sometimes I hear most of the same noise even when it does not ring; but, I recognize the sequence from when it does ring. I can tell when it is going to ring when the sound goes on long enough. Try keeping your cell phone within 2 feet of your speakers and see if the noise is any different, gets louder, or more pronounced.

(another lengthy trhead with no progress ... whatever)

And what do you do to help this thread? You post that it might be the hard drive clicking, an Idea posted multiple times by multiple users. Although I agree the noise could be coming from the Hdd (before OP stated he believes it's coming from the audio system from the ear buds being unplugged), your first sentence makes you sound awfully cocky, then you don't add a new Idea after it, just repeat what others have said.

Try reading whole thread before commenting because you are only adding to the lengthiness and adding no progress yourself.

Most of the threads here are too long and loaded with useless information or uninformed opinions. You're a fine example of this.

Based on your recent history you have no excuse to make ANY COMMENTS about long threads with no progress!!!

Case in point:

Another Outlet Mystery

There is a total of 40 posts in the above thread. You, ci139, made 13 posts yourself.That's 6 more that the closest competitor.

And, you made absolutely NO MEANINGFUL CONTRIBUTION WHATSOEVER to the content of the thread.

So, sit on your hands, and watch, until such time as you are able to make a meaningful contribution to a thread!!!

I have heard it too from my speakers. It appears to happen only when on CR4 using Mozilla Firefox, latest version.....

When it happens is not yet fixed in my mind.

I know! Try looking at the 'add ons' for Firefox. There is one that does make that 'camera noise' when it records that you have visited a new website. I forget which one, but I do remember tracking it down to get rid of it.

Have you got a printer connected, my printer makes a very load distinctive noise at least once a day.

Regards JD.

Maybe we should send all computer questions over to Tom's Hardware forums. People over there will probably have experienced something along the line of what the problem is, and it will free up our time to argue over jam nuts.

(And yes, I really am suggesting to the OP that they should present this problem to the people over there.)