MYSTERY AUDIO CODE

[samdog]

For the last 2-3 weeks.....occasionally ...like right now my pooter
starts barking a tone code similar to European Emergency Vehicles.
Like a quick two notes of high and low tone.
It repeats endlessly..... finally quits after 3-4 minutes

It is coming from inside the tower....not the speakers.
Usually it starts when machine is idle or sitting, doing minimal work.

XP Pro~ ABIT-AV8~ 2Gb SysMem~ Phoenix bios~Dedicated Video~
~new 500 SATA [3 mo]~ [home built~3 years] tall tower access always open~ exposed near the floor, not tucked in a cabinet.

Don't know what causes it nor how to eliminate it....
reboot does natch but other than that I think I cancelled it a few days ago by doing......!?!?!

HOLD IT !!!
all of a sudden it stopped.
I was messin'round in TaskMgr and bopped a program that was eating 98%... yet not hard running of OpSys not CPU .... yet showed my pooter was running at 98% usage.....yet the memory sat at 2%.
NOTHING was active but my EM program.
May not show up for a week.... or maybe tomorrow

don't know where the dual tones are coming from except inside the case itself. Have NEVER had this B4..... with any machine....ever.

Any ideas.... ?
Sam

 

[Cyberat_88]

You might have to do a thorough Virus/malware cleanup, internal speaker is usually indicative of hardware failure. I would shutdown all power, unplug power cord, let it sit for a minute, then make sure all cards and ram are properly inserted and "clicked in", screws are good and tight on cards and card is not moving.
Get a heat monitoring software and run that if still happening, if heat is 70C or lower on GPU and 45-65C on CPU, you should be fine on heat. Bios also has alarm and shutdown settings on heat, just make sure you are within norms if turning off.
Max temp at idle is not normal. Floor gathers a lot more dust, put it on desk or elevated space. Clean dust off the heat spreaders & MB.

 

[hang-the-9]

This sounds like a overheating alarm or something similar. Run Prim95 in tourture test mode, use the maximum heat option, see what happens. As a warning, if you DO have system issues, the test may very well crash your system. So up to you if you want to risk things, but it's really the only good way to test for stability and if you have an over-heating issue.

 

[samdog42]

Sorry to be so late getting back to you guys.
Followed YOUR lead & found what I think is the issue.

I erroronerously mentioned my pooter sat on the floor. It is NOT on my desktop nor pigeonholed but off the floor on a 9" tall, 18x24 ~ 4 legged platform

of its own so it is not directly gathering dust-bunnies.

I found that the hi-lo audio code fired off mostly when I was working with my photographs and editing software.
Have since removed video card and thoroughly cleaned it top to bottom of accumulated dust, grime & other nastys... including onboard fan blades.
... also gave the rest of the interior a through Spring Cleaning.

Time will tell if heat was the issue.
Logic says you were 'on-the-money' with that diagnosis.
Thanks for your quick response

with you two being 'spot-on', I soon will have another 'mystery' elsewhere on this Forum to try your brains.

Thanks again
Sam