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This morning my Dell desktop started to emit an ear splitting noise
through the speakers. very difficult to describe but imagine loud
white noise plus the screeching noise made by dragging a stylus across
a vinyl record.

Computer is 4 years old and has benn used monday-friday all day over
that time.

when this happened i was connected to the internet via isdn with
mozilla and outlook running. i use the windows xp firewall and have
norton antivirus with definitions up to date.I was using the free up
space on the hard drive function in control panel and had a few other
programs running.

I have restarted and everything seems ok now.

is this a virus, a hard disk death rattle or something else?

"Robert Frost" <> wrote in message
news: om...
> This morning my Dell desktop started to emit an ear splitting noise
> through the speakers. very difficult to describe but imagine loud
> white noise plus the screeching noise made by dragging a stylus across
> a vinyl record.
>
> Computer is 4 years old and has benn used monday-friday all day over
> that time.
>
> when this happened i was connected to the internet via isdn with
> mozilla and outlook running. i use the windows xp firewall and have
> norton antivirus with definitions up to date.I was using the free up
> space on the hard drive function in control panel and had a few other
> programs running.
>
> I have restarted and everything seems ok now.
>
> is this a virus, a hard disk death rattle or something else?


If it came through the speakers, then it isn't the harddrive. It's something
to do with the sound card (or onboard sound as the case may be). It could
have been a software error that caused the sound card to output the noise,
or it could have been a resource conflict or even a hardware problem with
the sound card that caused it. If it happens again, try updating your sound
drivers. If that doesn't help, move the card to another slot (if you have a
separate sound card).

"Thor" <> wrote in message news:<>...
> "Robert Frost" <> wrote in message
> news: om...
> > This morning my Dell desktop started to emit an ear splitting noise
> > through the speakers. very difficult to describe but imagine loud
> > white noise plus the screeching noise made by dragging a stylus across
> > a vinyl record.
> >
> > Computer is 4 years old and has benn used monday-friday all day over
> > that time.
> >
> > when this happened i was connected to the internet via isdn with
> > mozilla and outlook running. i use the windows xp firewall and have
> > norton antivirus with definitions up to date.I was using the free up
> > space on the hard drive function in control panel and had a few other
> > programs running.
> >
> > I have restarted and everything seems ok now.
> >
> > is this a virus, a hard disk death rattle or something else?
>
>
> If it came through the speakers, then it isn't the harddrive. It's something
> to do with the sound card (or onboard sound as the case may be). It could
> have been a software error that caused the sound card to output the noise,
> or it could have been a resource conflict or even a hardware problem with
> the sound card that caused it. If it happens again, try updating your sound
> drivers. If that doesn't help, move the card to another slot (if you have a
> separate sound card).


Thanks for the reply, will proceed as you recommend