Les Jones: Why is My PC Beeping All the Time?

May 06, 2008

Dear Lazyweb > Why is My PC Beeping All the Time?

Dear Lazyweb,

My new PC beeps pretty frequently. (It sounds like bing-bing or ching-ching - two pleasant notes.) OS is Windows XP Home Edition SP2. I have a Netgear wireless card with a mildly hyperactive status bar icon. I checked its prefs but didn't see any sound settings.

It happens when nothing is running except Firefox. It isn't happening on the hour or half hour. There are not alert boxes or anything. It's happened as far as I can tell ever since I got the computer.

What's up with that?

UPDATE: Mystery solved. It was the NetGear wireless card after all.

Posted by lesjones | TrackBack

Comments

Beeping constantly is generally a sign of the computer overheating, or the computer thinking that it's overheating.

Did you build the PC yourself and forget to put thermal paste between the CPU and the fan?

Also, it may be due to a faulty thermometer, or a temperature threshold setting set too low. On many computers, you can configure this through the BIOS setup screen.

Posted by: Jeremy at May 06, 2008

It's a factory-built Dell, so I don't think it's overheating. The beeping seems more like a reminder.

Posted by: Les Jones at May 06, 2008

It's a USB device loading and unloading. Check that I'd say. I have a USB splitter that my printer is on and the damn thing seems to be a polling device and thus it causes the computer to thing the printer is disconnecting and reconnecting all the time. Drives me crazy! If you have one of those, that's likely it, but it could be some loose connection or something.

It's the USB sound and you can confirm it by plugging and unplugging and USB device and hearing it.

Posted by: swanky at May 06, 2008

Could be. I've got a USB backup drive/media reader/hub attached to it.

Posted by: Les Jones at May 06, 2008

My first question was going to be "Is it a Dell?".

My Vostro 1500 does that too.

Posted by: Bruce at May 06, 2008

Is the beeping coming from your soundcard/external-speakers or from from the internal computer speaker/beeper/tones?

I'm guessing it's just one of the Windows' sounds like swanky said; either USB or something else. There should be a setting in the control panel to set system sounds. You could try checking that out to find the appropriate application/event (and then turn it off).

Posted by: Alcibiades McZombie at May 06, 2008