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01 Dec 10 - 06:07 PM (#3044499) Subject: Tech: BAW-ung BAW-ung From: Uncle_DaveO I keep getting what I assume is a trouble warning,but don't know what it is. Every now and then--say one to two minutes--with nothing else going on that I can associate with it, I hear "BAW-ung, BAW-ung, BAW-ung". And then silence. Three times. The "ung" is a softer, echo-like sound. No visible warning or information displays associated with it. This is an almost-new Dell Inspiron 560 desktop, running Windows 7, if that's helpful. Does anyone have any thoughts on cause and/or a fix? Especially a fix? Dave Oesterreich |
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01 Dec 10 - 06:36 PM (#3044517) Subject: RE: Tech: BAW-ung BAW-ung From: The Fooles Troupe Navigate to the Control Panel, Adjust settings, Appearance, etc Then go thru and listen to all the error sounds - this at least will educate what the various sounds are for - this may help to track it down. If you cannot find this sound, then it should not be coming from your PC - what to do then, I don't know... |
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01 Dec 10 - 07:22 PM (#3044533) Subject: RE: Tech: BAW-ung BAW-ung From: JohnInKansas If you don't find an error sound in Control Panel, it's possible you're hearing an outside interference. If it's an external source, about the best hope is that you can find a "simultaneous event" that you can blame it on. (Being accurate is difficult, but sometimes it's sufficient just being able to asssign the blame to something likely enough that you don't feel guilty about ignoring it?) One of our desktops in particular is subject to repeated "dit dut dit dit duh" noises that it took us quite a while to find were caused by a cell phone being "pinged" to keep track of which cell tower it was closest to. The "solution" was for her to keep the cell phone in her purse where it belongs, but that's only "variably successful" since she hardly ever knows where the $@#!%! thing is in order to answer calls. John |
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02 Dec 10 - 08:26 AM (#3044841) Subject: RE: Tech: BAW-ung BAW-ung From: Uncle_DaveO Foolestroupe, I went to the Control Panel, and eventually discovered the sound samples. It seems that I'm hearing what that display calls "Exclamation" (or maybe it said "Exclamation Point") repeated three times. And it's every five minutes, by my watch. I am guessing that there is some action that should be taken, and the triple exclamation is to bring attention to it. But what? It's not either Norton's or Windows 7's backup function; those are set for automatic. Seems unlikely it could refer to defragging, since the computer is almost new and has a large hard disk capacity. I'll check that, though. I do wish computer makers issued a user's manual these days; I might be able to find out there if I had one. Dave Oesterreich |
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02 Dec 10 - 10:58 AM (#3044944) Subject: RE: Tech: BAW-ung BAW-ung From: JohnInKansas Dave - Windows 7 (and Vista) should defrag automatically, in the background, if you haven't changed the settings. I haven't seen enough Win7 to tell you where it is, but in Vista if you open Control Panel and put defrag in the search box it should tell you where it is, and it should have a "run automatically" box checked that tells you when it runs. If you leave the box checked, you should never need to run it manually - and you should never see it run since it works in the background. John |
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02 Dec 10 - 04:35 PM (#3045189) Subject: RE: Tech: BAW-ung BAW-ung From: JohnInKansas In the Sounds section in Control Panel you should have a series of "events" like file open, file close, shutdown, error(s), etc. Each event can be assigned a sound, from a list of available sounds. In the default setup, most events may not have an assigned sound. The names of all the sounds seem to have been changed sometime between Win98/WinXP and Vista, and most of the events are given new names. I suspect that Win7 is the same as Vista or additionally obscured. In Vista, most likely to be close to Win7, you select an event and when you click on the name of the event the name of the sound appears in a box down at the bottom of the window. There's also a Browse button that lets you look at a list of the available sounds. If you click on one of the sounds, it is assigned to the event that was selected. Win7 may be slightly different but I'd expect it to be similar. Since any sound can be assigned to any event, you need to look at both the event and the sound it uses. Once you know the name of the sound, you also will need to look at whether the sound you're hearing is assigned to more than one event. If the same sound - the one you hear - is assigned to two events, you can click on one of the events, click Browse, and click on any different sound. The sound that you click on will be assigned to the event that was selected. One of the sounds that you can select is (none), either at the top or bottom of the browse list, if you want to "turn off" the sound for an event. When Win98 came out with the "sound recorder" it became possible to patch excerpts from .wav files in to replace the built-in sounds, and to string multiple excerpts together. The boys and girls at Microsoft, then being encouraged to do "creative things" (apparently no longer policy there) put together a number of dialog clips from movies/TV popular at the time, that people could use in place of the rather boring little beeps and squeeks that came with Windows. Selections from Blazing Saddles, Treasure of Sierra Madre, Casablanca, Annie Hall, Wizard of Oz, Airport, etc made for some interesting sound effects in the office. (The archive I have is about 100 "clips," and surprisingly we remember most of the shows they're from - but we're elderly.) It might be assumed that if you can find the folder that the Browse button takes you to, you should be able to add any appropriately short (2 to 5 second seems about right?) .wav files to expand the vocabulary your computer can use to inform you of what you're doing. I don't find any info on this for Vista, so can't guarantee that it will still work though. I'm a bit surprised that the selection of sounds seems to have been significantly reduced in Vista - and probably in Win7 - since Microsoft seems to have assumed that you're an idiot or you wouldn't have bought their new stuff. One might think they'd want the clearest and most versatile language for the computer to use to frequently remind you how stupid you are; but they seem not to have been quite that clever themselves. <Note: personal opinion in the paragraph.> John |
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02 Dec 10 - 05:35 PM (#3045219) Subject: RE: Tech: BAW-ung BAW-ung From: Uncle_DaveO Good, but confusing news: I ran Norton's diagnose-and-fix-the-registry facility. It told me it had found and fixed a problem. I then poked around for the defrag function, which I now gather wouldn't have done anything, and to tell the truth I doubted that was where the trouble was anyway. I closed down the computer and then started it again. It's several hours now, and I haven't heard the sound in question, which makes me think it had to do with the registry. Thanx, allabody, for your attention. Dave Oesterreich |
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02 Dec 10 - 06:04 PM (#3045233) Subject: RE: Tech: BAW-ung BAW-ung From: The Fooles Troupe The Exclamation usually was set to some sort of 'error condition' which means that something was happening contrary to what was expected, such as trying to open a link to a file that had been moved, etc. Since it was happening so often, I would have been concerned, but since the Registry breaks so often and easily, it may not have been anything really significant and important. Since 'something was fixed in the registry'!!!! and the sound stopped, perhaps all is now ok! :-) |