This may sound strange, but im kacking my pants ATM
Hi all, for a while now my Pc has been making a very strange intermittent noise.
Its a very quiet, scratchy sound, like a dog scratching soil. It happens once, towards the right side, then again, about a second and a half after, but quieter, towards the left hand side

Been hearing it for about a month, dismissed it, thinking it was me spinning out, but it happened several times today, at irregular intervals.

Bout ten mins ago, i was reading in my bedroom, pc on, i heard it. It then happened about 20 seconds later, unmistakeable, the same two noises, same length apart.

I have also had experiences where my PC has turned on in the middle of the night, which is equally as scary

I have no idea what it could be, it happens at seemingly random intervals, when im doing something on the PC or not. It cant be interference either, as its the same exact sound.

If anybody has ever heard of this before, or had it happen to them, please post, as this is really freaking me out.



ScaredBob

Dirty cooling fans, maybe. Or a loose wire hitting a fan, or a misaligned fan. Or your hard disk is about to die. Could be a few things. Have you taken the case off and had a look ? If it's intermittent, sounds like a fan issue to me.

hi booj, its deffo coming from the speakers though m8, and its exactly the same sound every time.
My Pc is a total warzone where ive put new stuff in and bodged it around, but i just cant see why it would make this noise.
Could it be a weird virus maybe?

D'oh, sorry, didn't realise it was the speakers.

Though having said that, my speakers have interference from (I think) the CPU cooling fan and the fan on my gfx card (my speakers are shite, though, and I'm using onboard sound from the mobo).

Dunno bout turning itself on though, not heard of that. I'll leave it for a proper tech bod to answer.

Thanks anyway booj, i can tell ya, waking up to the sound of the 'beep' of my pc really put a paranoid dread into me. as does this recent noise.

What kind of noise does the interference make on your pc mate?

Just a kinda buzzing hum, but only when the fans really kick in, not constant. It's pretty bad, but fiddling around with the volume control in windoze and the volume knob in the speakers has minimised it, there's kinda an ideal setting (fairly quiet on the windoze volume) where I can crank the speakers up pretty high before it becomes noticeable.

Your PC might be switching itself on cos you got it set to boot on mouse movement...

As for the noise - sounds like you possibly have a short on the wires somewhere - try jiggling your speaker wires about and see if you can reproduce the noise.

Also with it appearing on one side, then quieter on the other - do you have EAX enabled? This is assuming you have a Soundblaster card - could be revereb on that even...

So many things it could be....

could be a wee mouse stuck inside maybe???

It's got to be a hamster to cause that much racket.

I'd watch it dosent scratch your hard drivde when you remove it.

I'd try the removal tool from this site HERE



NK.

hi all thanks for your replies, checked thoroughly in the pc, couldnt find a rodent, but there was a ball of dust around the same size though!

Been thinking it must be the soundcard from what plantaion said, as its an m-audio delta 101lt, sorta basic Midi/multitrack recorder card, and has no end of bollox connected to it. Ive now unconnected everything, re-done the wiring so all wires cross at a 90 degree angle and sorted everything proper. Hopefully it wont happen again! Im dont really believe in ghosts but that was shitting me up!

As with regards with the turning on at night, i found all the 'wake' options disabled, but it only happened before i formatted the hard drive so that must have sorted it

Ta,

SlightlyRelievedBob

i found out what it was! its the little dog in the search window scratching himself! ive now told him to fuck off

that has to be oe of the funniest things i ever read. after having everyone worried you'd just left search open

Thats brightened up my day no end!

Your not kidding!?


Write to microsoft saying how much torment that dog has caused you