This is weird

[lewmur]

I've been servicing PC's for a couple of decades but this is the first time I've encountered this weirdness. All of a sudden my computer that has been in operation for years has decided that it has to remind every minute, by beeping, that it is alive and operating.The only thing new I've installed was the free ZA, but the damnned beeping didn't start just after that install. ZA had been working for a day or so before this started and I can turn ZA off and it doesn't stop. Every minute (plus a couple of seconds) the defaut "beep" sounds. No apps running. I've run several malware checkers and nothing shows. But the beep goes on. It's driving me nuts.

[mlangdn]

CMOS Battery may be dying.

[lewmur]

CMOS Battery may be dying.

Replaced the battery. Still doing it. Booted to Mint 6 and it doesn't do it here.

[tommyj12]

Huh funny that mint doesn't do it? I was gonna say check the beep codes, but only windows? I just a few weeks ago found out that a failing hd will beep, never knew.

Edited November 21, 2008 by tommyj12

[nlinecomputers]

is it a beep from the PC speakers or one of the windows sound effects going via the sound card? You might have set an event to beep. Also check your event logs.

Edited November 21, 2008 by nlinecomputers

[lewmur]

is it a beep from the PC speakers or one of the windows sound effects going via the sound card? You might have set an event to beep. Also check your event logs.

It is the Windows defualt beep that I'm hearing. If I go to the Control Panel, select Sound and Audio devices/Sounds/Default beep and set it to "none" then the beeping stops. Check the event logs and there are no entries to match the beep times. In fact, I cleared the log and let the beep occur several times and the logs are still empty.

[goretsky]

Hello,Let's see if you can isolate which application is generating the Windows sound event.Does the beep occur if you start the computer in Safe Mode?What about if you login as a different user?Regards,Aryeh Goretsky

[lewmur]

Hello,Let's see if you can isolate which application is generating the Windows sound event.Does the beep occur if you start the computer in Safe Mode?What about if you login as a different user?Regards,Aryeh Goretsky

I'm still not entirely certain what happened but I suspect it had something to do with the new ZoneAlarm I installed.I booted to safe mode but that didn't tell me anything because safe mode doesn't install the drivers for my sound system. I enabled the Guest account and switched to it and the beep was still there. But when a switched back to my regular account, DynDNS Updater showed a red flag and I clicked to "force an update." Since then the beep has disappeared.I think that the Updater and ZA were somehow fighting with each other and have now settled their argument.