My computer beeps continuously. What's happening?

May 26, 2006 9:09 PM

I noticed my computer starting to beep often about 2 years ago (I think) even when I'm just browsing the Inkernet. I have a feeling that's not normal.

I'm on Pentium 4, 2.4Ghz system with 512MB of RAM. My motherboard is Asus P4PE. You can listen to the beeps here. I was scrolling up and down a page on AskMeFi when I recorded that.

When I'm doing something a little more CPU intensive (working on Photoshop, for eg) the beeping is more frequent. When I'm trying to edit a video, it progresses into a symphony.

I didn't pay much attention to the beeping all these years but now I'm quite concerned. Please help!

posted by mordecai to computers & internet (8 comments total)

Perhaps it's that beep that indicates that your keyboard cache is full? That thing that says you've pressed so many keys that the system needs a minute to catch up?
posted by IndigoRain at 9:15 PM on May 26, 2006

My comp makes similar, stuttering beeps when I have a lot of programs going, and I'm scrolling the mousewheel.
It's a memory/catch-up thing.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 9:20 PM on May 26, 2006

Is it coming from your soundcard? It's probably just interferance that the soundcard isn't filtering out. My old PC used to have this problem.
posted by delmoi at 9:41 PM on May 26, 2006

It's gotta be coming from somewhere on the motherboard. If it's just interference, then that doesn't justify the increase in the beeping during cpu intensive work, does it?

the memory/catch-up thing makes sense tho. so what should I do? increase my ram, I suppose?
posted by mordecai at 10:12 PM on May 26, 2006

The more work the CPU is doing, the more noise gets generated, and the more you hear through interference. I can't listen to the sound file, it may be something else..

If it is interference, make sure the volume on your sound card is close to maximum, and try to control volume at the speakers/amplifier rather than in software. Also, check out this recent question: The sound of silence.
posted by Chuckles at 10:31 PM on May 26, 2006

If it's just interference, then that doesn't justify the increase in the beeping during cpu intensive work,

Modern CPUs disable when there's no work to be done, and can even turn off parts of the chip that arn't in use. So more CPU = More EM interferance.

Like I said, my old computer had this problem, although the noise was pretty quite compared to like winamp or something, it was still pretty irritating.
posted by delmoi at 10:50 PM on May 26, 2006

sorry, your link to the noise is dorfed for me, so i can't hear it.

but if it's the same kind of beeping as the beeps you get when you start it up, it might be your computer warning you that your CPU is getting hot. this would happen more frequently if you're doing processor-intensive things. (mine was beeping incessantly when my thermal compound had gotten all dried out and the cpu was overheating).
posted by sergeant sandwich at 10:56 AM on May 27, 2006

Our PC did the same thing after we had to replace the motherboard, we took it back to the shop who installed/sold us the motherboard and after a day of fiddling around they couldn't find anything wrong with it and suggested we just disconnect the computer's internal speaker if it was bugging us. That was back in January and the PC's still doing fine.

In our case:
Cause: motherboard
Solution: disconnected internal speaker
Result: it's all good
posted by mule at 1:11 AM on May 28, 2006