Computer speakers and hard drive are suddenly acting flaky.

June 21, 2004 3:39 PM

Early this morning I was woken up to my computer speakers making a very loud, awful static noise. I got out of bed, shut them off, turned on the monitor, found that my computer was restarting itself, and went back to bed. This afternoon when I got home from work I turned the speakers back on and they were still making the static noise AND I discovered that my second hard drive was no longer being recognized. So I restarted the computer and now everything is fine -- what's going on here? (Windows XP Home)

Actually -- everything is NOT fine. Playing mp3s it sounds fine most of the time, but then goes in and out -- it almost sounds like an audio tape getting stuck in the player. Time for new speakers? Maybe, they're old. But how on earth could the hard drive be related to this? (Don't know if this is an important detail: I've been running my Air Conditioner off of the same outlet at my computer).

posted by TurkishGolds to Computers & Internet (1 answer total)

Well there you go. Air conditioners suck down a lot of power and are undoubtedly electrically noisy to boot; if your computer doesn't get good power, just about anything can happen. At least try putting a surge protector before the computer; even better, use a different circuit altogether, or try getting a UPS.
posted by xil at 3:45 PM on June 21, 2004