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Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Stealth on May 11, 2004, 09:11:57 pm

Title: anyone know why my PC's playing a police siren?
Post by: Stealth on May 11, 2004, 09:11:57 pm
yeah.

my computer's sound card's putting out a looped, continuous police siren.  i can't think of any programs that are making it do that, since only Kazaa, AIM, and McAfee are open..
Title: anyone know why my PC's playing a police siren?
Post by: mikhael on May 11, 2004, 09:29:56 pm
Could your PC have a heat alarm?
Title: anyone know why my PC's playing a police siren?
Post by: StratComm on May 11, 2004, 09:33:03 pm
Is it actually putting out that sound or is it feeding it to the speakers?  I'd think an alarm would be tied to the internal speaker, so that you'd hear it regardless of your speakers being on/off.
Title: anyone know why my PC's playing a police siren?
Post by: mikhael on May 11, 2004, 09:38:01 pm
A good point. But if there's a motherboard chipset driver that sends windows events....?

I know my motherboard chipset driver can do that, but I've got the heat alarms turned off. I already know it gets up to 70C. I don't need an alarm to tell me. ;)
Title: anyone know why my PC's playing a police siren?
Post by: Stealth on May 11, 2004, 09:43:36 pm
could be a heat alarm of some sort, but my computer's processor is running at a cool 107 degrees, and many times it goes a good 15 degrees over that without the siren going off.  also, it keeps going when i close USDM, the feature that came with the motherboard.

the sound is not coming from a PC speaker, it's coming out of the speakers that are attached to the sound card.  

i thought at first, a police siren?  does XP have something that plays that sound when it detects you're doing something illegal or something?
Title: anyone know why my PC's playing a police siren?
Post by: phreak on May 11, 2004, 09:47:33 pm
vampires did it
Title: anyone know why my PC's playing a police siren?
Post by: Stealth on May 11, 2004, 10:56:12 pm
yeah.  sure.

now anyone have a logical explanation?  could it be perhaps my sound control panel (NVidia control panel).  i noticed that during this episode, when i tried opening the control panel, it said that some sound file part of the control panel had performed an illegal operation, etc.  but i still don't know why it would play a siren.

it's happened before too
Title: anyone know why my PC's playing a police siren?
Post by: Bobboau on May 11, 2004, 11:34:21 pm
um, maybe your computer is infested with ad/spyware...
Title: anyone know why my PC's playing a police siren?
Post by: Stealth on May 11, 2004, 11:52:11 pm
that's a possibility :P

and i can't get rid of the damn popups that randomly pop up.  like, i'll leave the computer idle, and in the morning i'll have 6 popups, the same site on each one.  and during the day when i'm using it, suddenly like 3 or 4 sites will suddenly pop up.  any good spyware/adware programs?  i've used Spybot search and destroy
Title: anyone know why my PC's playing a police siren?
Post by: Bobboau on May 11, 2004, 11:54:52 pm
ok, I'd say that's defenately your problem then
Title: anyone know why my PC's playing a police siren?
Post by: Sesquipedalian on May 12, 2004, 12:19:20 am
Webroot's SpySweeper and PopUpWasher are good.
Title: anyone know why my PC's playing a police siren?
Post by: Zuljin on May 12, 2004, 01:28:08 am
I'm using Ad-aware and Spy Bot search and destroy, seems to take away most of the crap that sneaks in at times
Title: anyone know why my PC's playing a police siren?
Post by: Janos on May 12, 2004, 02:25:22 am
u r being h4X0r3d!
Title: anyone know why my PC's playing a police siren?
Post by: Black Wolf on May 12, 2004, 05:39:43 am
Maybe they found the midget pr0n?
Title: anyone know why my PC's playing a police siren?
Post by: Nico on May 12, 2004, 06:23:36 am
Isn't MacAfee warning you about a virus? I used to have an antivirus which would play a siren sound when detecting a virus. It would also show a warning message too, tho.
Title: anyone know why my PC's playing a police siren?
Post by: Stealth on May 12, 2004, 06:43:37 am
yeah thing is it just did it again, and this time McAfee's uninstalled, so i know it's definatly not McAfee ;)
Title: anyone know why my PC's playing a police siren?
Post by: Zuljin on May 12, 2004, 06:56:18 am
Quote
Originally posted by Stealth
yeah thing is it just did it again, and this time McAfee's uninstalled, so i know it's definatly not McAfee ;)


Just try to run a full virus scan and some spyware removers and see if that solves it. It's worth a try, it's the only thing I can think of since the cpu isn't overheating...

Or actually...try checking the RAM, take out the sticks and reinsert them if you can, but try the virus and spyware thingy first
Title: anyone know why my PC's playing a police siren?
Post by: Sandwich on May 12, 2004, 11:01:53 am
Stop using IE - that's how 99.9% of the spyware and viruses sneak through.
Title: anyone know why my PC's playing a police siren?
Post by: mikhael on May 12, 2004, 11:05:36 am
Quote
Originally posted by Sandwich
Stop using IE - that's how 99.9% of the spyware and viruses sneak through.


Amen to that.

Its amazing how much crap you can avoid just by avoiding lowest common denominator software
Title: anyone know why my PC's playing a police siren?
Post by: Liberator on May 12, 2004, 11:10:41 am
Be aware some websites don't work in Mozilla, et al, very well.
Title: anyone know why my PC's playing a police siren?
Post by: mikhael on May 12, 2004, 11:12:28 am
They generally will if you lie to the website and say you're using IE.
Title: anyone know why my PC's playing a police siren?
Post by: ionia23 on May 12, 2004, 11:22:10 am
The RIAA (Ripoff Industry of American Assholes) has "stepped up their tactics", says I.  Better empty your shared folder.

:)
Title: anyone know why my PC's playing a police siren?
Post by: Sandwich on May 12, 2004, 04:30:03 pm
Quote
Originally posted by mikhael
They generally will if you lie to the website and say you're using IE.


Actually, you'd be amazed at the number of sites that use proprietary IE "HTML" for their most basic navigational functions. And the thing that gets me the most is when I can't figure out how an apparent "button" is actually supposed to do anything by viewing the source code.
Title: anyone know why my PC's playing a police siren?
Post by: Lightspeed on May 12, 2004, 05:15:50 pm
Quote
Originally posted by Sandwich
Stop using IE - that's how 99.9% of the spyware and viruses sneak through.


Or, even better -- browse under Linux - practically NO spyware can get through to you there
;7
Title: anyone know why my PC's playing a police siren?
Post by: jdjtcagle on May 12, 2004, 06:13:18 pm
Quote
Originally posted by Sesquipedalian
Webroot's SpySweeper and PopUpWasher are good.


Wow... SpySweeper works like a charm!! thanks for pointing this out.:)
Title: anyone know why my PC's playing a police siren?
Post by: mikhael on May 12, 2004, 07:34:00 pm
Quote
Originally posted by Sandwich


Actually, you'd be amazed at the number of sites that use proprietary IE "HTML" for their most basic navigational functions. And the thing that gets me the most is when I can't figure out how an apparent "button" is actually supposed to do anything by viewing the source code.


You're right: I would be amazed. I haven't seen any in a very, very long time. Could you point me to some I might use? ;)

I admit, I tend to browse sites that are very specifically agnostic and/or standards compliant, so I must miss these sites to which you refer.
Title: anyone know why my PC's playing a police siren?
Post by: Stealth on May 12, 2004, 10:08:39 pm
that SpySweeper program is amazing.  thanks to whoever recommended it :yes: :yes:
Title: anyone know why my PC's playing a police siren?
Post by: Kosh on May 13, 2004, 01:22:07 am
So it's fixed?
Title: anyone know why my PC's playing a police siren?
Post by: Sandwich on May 13, 2004, 05:02:51 am
Quote
Originally posted by mikhael


You're right: I would be amazed. I haven't seen any in a very, very long time. Could you point me to some I might use? ;)

I admit, I tend to browse sites that are very specifically agnostic and/or standards compliant, so I must miss these sites to which you refer.


Usually I run across them at work, you know the kind... the boss says to go to this site, see if what they offer businesses/websites is something we can use, and if so, implement it. The site then turns out to be a horrid maze of nested tables, font tags, and other assorted IE-friendly paraphenalia.
Title: anyone know why my PC's playing a police siren?
Post by: mikhael on May 13, 2004, 11:52:23 am
Back off the nested tables and font tags man...

:D

I used to use those alot, until I found that CSS and DIVs made my life REALLY easy.
Title: anyone know why my PC's playing a police siren?
Post by: Stealth on May 23, 2004, 06:27:14 pm
Quote
Originally posted by Kosh
So it's fixed?


actually, no.  last night i double-clicked a MP3, and a siren went off... and kept going off till i rebooted :p :cool:

i'm out of ideas ;)
Title: Re: anyone know why my PC's playing a police siren?
Post by: JarC on May 23, 2004, 07:11:31 pm
Quote
Originally posted by Stealth
yeah.

my computer's sound card's putting out a looped, continuous police siren.  i can't think of any programs that are making it do that, since only Kazaa, AIM, and McAfee are open..

Actually I had the same thing happening at the office last week...

you might wanna go look for a new vid card...:( it is coming apart...
Title: anyone know why my PC's playing a police siren?
Post by: Knight Templar on May 23, 2004, 07:57:02 pm
Your computer knows what you do at night.

BTW: Spybot rocks.
Title: Re: Re: anyone know why my PC's playing a police siren?
Post by: Stealth on May 24, 2004, 12:10:31 am
Quote
Originally posted by JarC

you might wanna go look for a new vid card...:( it is coming apart...


would the video card make that wailing sound?!  :lol: :p

KT:  yeah. it's a nice program
Title: anyone know why my PC's playing a police siren?
Post by: CP5670 on May 24, 2004, 12:33:42 am
your computer is randomly making a siren noise? :wtf: Can you record it and post it here? That's the first time I have ever heard of anything like that.

I would use Mozilla instead of IE but I can't get it to work with any flash or shockwave material, which rules out quite a few sites these days.

For the adware and spyware, the Adaware/Spybot combination seems to work well and has gotten everything for me so far.
Title: anyone know why my PC's playing a police siren?
Post by: kasperl on May 24, 2004, 10:16:58 am
Is it a smooth siren noise, or more like those old DOS games?
Title: anyone know why my PC's playing a police siren?
Post by: Kosh on May 24, 2004, 11:32:54 am
Quote
Originally posted by Stealth


actually, no.  last night i double-clicked a MP3, and a siren went off... and kept going off till i rebooted :p :cool:

i'm out of ideas ;)



Whoa, this is the wierdest problem I have ever seen. Does it do this only when you do certain things or just randomly? Did you install or download anything lately? Some viruses do piggyback on video files.
Title: anyone know why my PC's playing a police siren?
Post by: JarC on May 24, 2004, 12:25:12 pm
As I said, dunno exactly what was wrong with the video card, but after replacing it the siren stopped...I could get it to stop by mucking with the display settings and changing the card's sync rate and/or resolution, but it only stayed quiet a couple of minutes and then it started again, and it is indeed much like a continuous two-tone siren, produced  by the on-board bleeper of your mobo...yet the display didn't look as if the card was about to give in...does your card have an onboard fan? maybe it's kaput and the GPU is overheating?

ah...did a quick search...was indeed the fan on the GPU...and the siren is your mobo's overheating alarm, so it can also be that your CPU fan is on the fritz, check the hardware monitor page of your BIOS to see if the temp for mobo or CPU isn't running too hot...
Title: anyone know why my PC's playing a police siren?
Post by: Stealth on May 24, 2004, 01:00:00 pm
no it's definately not my computer overheating, because the displays show it's running just over 100 degrees farenheit.

next time it goes on i'll record it...
Title: anyone know why my PC's playing a police siren?
Post by: Sandwich on May 24, 2004, 04:38:49 pm
Could be a fan jammed.
Title: anyone know why my PC's playing a police siren?
Post by: aldo_14 on May 25, 2004, 08:11:50 am
Quote
Originally posted by Sandwich


Usually I run across them at work, you know the kind... the boss says to go to this site, see if what they offer businesses/websites is something we can use, and if so, implement it. The site then turns out to be a horrid maze of nested tables, font tags, and other assorted IE-friendly paraphenalia.


Bear in mind, tho, that you need to nest HTML tags - otherwise it's not standards compliant (HTML4.1 is an XML subset, so you need to correct markup syntax to create a DOM tree) - technically, the browser shouln't display anything that doesn't use solely nested tags.... but seeing as it's not yet standardized (next standard forces browsers to reject non-well formd markup, i think), mosdt browsers rdiosplay dodgy html (etc) rather than look broken.

Oh, and the siren is possibly(as has been suggested) a heat warning from the motherboard.... I get it a fair bit, natch*  I'd suggest checking the BIOS settings, seeing if there is a heat alarm setup - it could be an overall hear thing - maybe your old video card was running hot.

Or, as has just occured to me, it could be a PSU problem - I had that a few months back, my old PSU was fluctating wildly in (I think the +5 -5v range or thereabout) voltage for certain levels, which left me Pc none-too-chuffed.  

*actually, I only get it when I have 2 CD drives installed in me machine, cos the ventialaitons fecked then.... for a while I only had a CD-R, and the temperature never went above 60 deg - but I added a DVD-RW recently, which has taken it baken in squealy-squeal territory.
Title: anyone know why my PC's playing a police siren?
Post by: JarC on May 25, 2004, 08:35:26 am
Quote
Originally posted by Stealth
no it's definately not my computer overheating, because the displays show it's running just over 100 degrees farenheit.

next time it goes on i'll record it...
forget the sound, if no one knows what you mean, they've never heard it...if it aint the mobo, than it is either the GPU running to hot, causing the mobo to overheat too, or what Aldo said, your PSU can't keep up anymore...because the siren is the mobo's overheat alarm...
Title: anyone know why my PC's playing a police siren?
Post by: Stealth on May 25, 2004, 03:11:20 pm
oh. ok. thanks :D

no wait.  i've got 6 case fans though... case temperature never goes above 70 degrees farenheit.  how could it be my motherboad overheating?


is there any way i could find the clip of that sound, so i could see if it's the sound my computer's making?
Title: anyone know why my PC's playing a police siren?
Post by: aldo_14 on May 25, 2004, 03:20:28 pm
Quote
Originally posted by Stealth
oh. ok. thanks :D

no wait.  i've got 6 case fans though... case temperature never goes above 70 degrees farenheit.  how could it be my motherboad overheating?


is there any way i could find the clip of that sound, so i could see if it's the sound my computer's making?


Well, depends what your alaram threshold is set at...mine is 70, so I get warnings at that temp.  Have you checked your PSU voltages, though?  Should be able to in the BIOS.
Title: anyone know why my PC's playing a police siren?
Post by: StratComm on May 25, 2004, 03:44:10 pm
70 farenheit is room temperature though, if not a little cooler.  But while the case may not get hot as a whole, the elements on the mobo could be getting too hot locally, though if that's the case it's probably indicative of another problem.
Title: anyone know why my PC's playing a police siren?
Post by: Stealth on May 25, 2004, 05:31:04 pm
Strattcomm and aldo:

Yes, my computer is more-or less room temperature.  we keep the house at 69 degrees at this time of year (give or take a degree or two).  i also have my room roof fan on constantly, so my entire room is the house temperature.  the front of my case is at the front of my desk, and i have three fans sucking in at the bottom of the case, and then at the top (by the power supply fan) i have three fans blowing out, so there's a constant circulation of air.

voltages look about normal too.

(http://www.3dap.com/hlp/hosted/stealth/hostedpictures/currenttemp.JPG)

looking good ;)
Since my format yesterday, it hasn't happened yet, and i don't think it will, but i'm still interested to see exactly what caused it in the first place.  and i haven't heard of motherboard parts overheating too often, other than the CPU and chipset of course.  the internal temperature would have to be well over 100 degrees farenheit for it to overheat, wouldn't it?
Title: anyone know why my PC's playing a police siren?
Post by: aldo_14 on May 26, 2004, 08:10:25 am
Well, i can only speak from personal experience in terms of what causes mad bleepy noises.  I think I got mixed up with your temps (uk uses celcius largely) - for ref, IIRC 70 C is the max safe limit for a (AMD) chip.
Title: anyone know why my PC's playing a police siren?
Post by: Stealth on May 26, 2004, 10:21:52 am
yeah well as you can see mine never even goes half of that ;)

i can understand it playing a bleepy noise, like BEEP. BEEP. BEEP.  but it doesn't, it plays a damn police siren LOL, which according to JarC is my motherboard heat alarm, which is very possible, but i can't see how it would overheat
Title: anyone know why my PC's playing a police siren?
Post by: aldo_14 on May 26, 2004, 12:14:13 pm
Quote
Originally posted by Stealth
yeah well as you can see mine never even goes half of that ;)

i can understand it playing a bleepy noise, like BEEP. BEEP. BEEP.  but it doesn't, it plays a damn police siren LOL, which according to JarC is my motherboard heat alarm, which is very possible, but i can't see how it would overheat


Well, it could still be your voltage - that is exactly the sound my Pc would make.

Unfortunately, I can only go by my own PCs, and I don't have the same labels as on your diagnostic thingie - specifically, I don't have Vdd or vCore readings,  i have Vcc (2.70) and Vio (3.31) readings.

(http://www.aldo14.f2s.com/hw.jpg)
Title: anyone know why my PC's playing a police siren?
Post by: Ulala on May 26, 2004, 04:35:56 pm
Sometimes AIM will play ads at the top of your buddy list window with sound and all, but I haven't heard any with sirens, nor have I heard the same ad/sounds twice.. so I'm at a loss as well.