h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Ok, my computer appears to be possessed!

It works perfectly, hardly ever crashes, never seems to run out of memory, and is surprisingly well behaved, apart from one strange thing.

Between Midday and 2 pm in the afternoon it starts beeping at me...

Don't think it's at exactly the same time each day, but it's always within that time window... Several *loud* beeps (which can be heard from three offices away) this can be repeated several times over a ten-fifteen minute period.

The beeps themselves come from the onboard PC speaker, not from the speakers attached to the sound card.

It seems to be completely independant of any 'visible' programmes running at the time and seems only to happen when I'm not actually working on the computer at the time.

The computer itself is less than a year old and was just about top-of-the-range when it was purchased.
PIV, 2GB RAM, Windows XP etc...

Anyone any ideas what might be causing it?

Is it hungry?

B

Yeah, there's a lonely tamagotchi in the Bios

The BIOS uses loud PC-speaker beeps to indicate things like faulty memory, but normally only during the "power on self test" when you switch the computer on. I presume there are no messages appearing on the screen.

http://www.amptron.com/html/bios.beepcodes.html

The only one I can see in the above link is that there might be a dodgy cpu fan involved.
It's the only beep code I can see there (with an idmittedly cursory skim read) that happens when the system is up and running. All others occur during the initial set up.

Stuck key or something leaning slighty on the keyboard?

No messages appearing on the screen, it could theoretically be an overheat warning of some kind, problem is, it's an HP, and they've got their own bios and the manual only covers those beep codes you'd hear on boot-up...

I'd be surprised at an overheat message though as it seems to occur when I'm not working on the machine - which I'd have thought would be when the processor's at its coolest.

PCs heating up have nothing to do with how much the PC is being used. It's not like a car with moving parts. It can be down to a faulty CPU or system fan. Believe me, I know.

If your company has tech support, get them involved. Having said that, if they're anything like the tech support at one company I worked for, they'll mark the problem as 'non-urgent' until your PC actually dies. Alternatively, get in touch with HP's local tech support, if there is such a thing, or tech support for the people the PC was bought from.

My company's Tech Support is generally me!

The d**n thing just did it again, about 20 short bleeps, with seemingly random pauses in between them, two seconds after I'd left the office to speak to someone.

Yes, it's true. Electrically, the CPU in a PC is working at 100% all the time, even when it is just sitting there waiting for you to press a key.

Are you sure nothing is resting on the keyboard?

Nope, nothing on the keyboard...

I'd been typing on it thirty seconds previously, stood up, walked out of the office and it started bleeping - by the time I got back it'd stopped.

Maybe it's just lonely?

is there a little er inside it which needs you near?

Long shot as you are the IT gadgee, but the virus checker? I have the ones here setup to scan at lunchtimes and they beep if they find anything....
BCNU - Crescent

Nope, not the anti-virus - that much I'm pretty sure of

Just a thought, and I'm no techno- but have you changed the button battery in the CPU, as they don't last forever!

I don't know whether that would cause the computer to bleep though.

Computer's less than a year old so that's unlikely to be the problem (plus - in my experience - flat batteries generally show themselves when you try and boot up and the thing no longer recognises your hard drives etc.)

Ok, failing anything else it looks like I'll have a look at the temperatures on the thing and make sure the fans are all working properly.

Just to be picky "but have you changed the button battery in the CPU"
The battery is for the CMOS and is on the motherboard, not in the CPU.
These can go early, like any battery they normally last quite long but you get the ocasional duff one. Anyway, if it was this you'd have problems on startup and throughout operation as essentially the computer would forget what it had installed and attached, and it doesn't sound like that.

Hope I'm not teaching granny to suck eggs here, but the best way of checking the temp is to wait for it to start beeping, kill it (yes, drastic I know!) then reboot and go into the bios to check.

Reason I say to kill it is that otherwise the windows shutdown might take too long and the temp will have dropped to acceptable levels.

Obviously I'd recommend you save and close everything and leave the computer with no input and nothing running (including TSRs) for at least half an hour to minimise chances of data corruption. Or be less paranoid and do a proper shutdown.

Of course, the easy way would be to get a freeware MB/CPU monitor software utility from somewhere liuke tucows.

Heatwise, if it is a modern computer (which it is by the sounds of it) then it is likely that when overheating is detected it will throttle the CPU back. Do you notice it running slower after it has beeped?

Nope, no sign of any untoward slowdowns - but as I said, it only seems to bleep when I'm not actually doing anything anyway.

It's an Intel processor and thankfully they _do_ slow down when they get too hot (unlike some AMD chips which don't until they actually burst into flames).

Pulled the side off the machine and had a quick look inside - the chassis fan's running fine, the CPU fan seems to be running fine and the heatsink looks reasonably well attached (for obvious reasons I didn't actually tug at the thing to see if it'd come off!)