Hi Friends,
This is wierd! I usually keep the volume way, way down, on my speakers, because most of the sounds annoy me. However, I find a few of them helpful, so I just keep the volume low, rather than completely muted.
I explain the volume situation to explain why I did not notice exactly when the music first started playing. But playing it is, and I can't find the source. I've hit the red X on every browser window and tab that I have open, and closed everything except IE and Windows Explorer. Even if I go offline (disconnect from internet), the music keeps playing. And the CD drive and floppy drive are both empty.
I do have a couple of games which play background music, but I haven't played or opened them today. Plus, this music does not sound like what the games play.
My next move will be to Restart, which I'm guessing will stop the music. But before I do that, I want to try to find out where it's coming from, so I can disable it from its source. Does anyone know if there is a way to find out where it's coming from, besides process of elimination (closing all open programs, one at a time).
And more importantly, is there any known malware which causes music to play over the computer speakers? I have scanned with Ad-Aware (defs NOT up to date) and Spybot S&D (defs ARE up to date), and I have SpywareBlaster and IE-SpyAd, as well. Hmmm, maybe I'll run AVG scan while I wait for replies. I'll post results.
Thank you very much for your kind help :flowers:
just a guess, look at running process and look at activity and usage
can you describe the music? does it repeat? and you shoud be able to i think right click the speaker icon, and disable one at a time to see what general area it is coming from?
just music, does it repeate after a bit, any voice at all?
and remembering my old FCC days....anyway the sounds could be from a radio? ( i don't know what the sounds are)
you might have a bit of cross talk/interference from a tv/radio station? and don't laugh as speaker wires can act as a antenna and they are about 39 inches long ( fm) i have had to deal with that stuff in the past
Hmm, interesting....
Thanks for your comments mitch :D
I have not noticed any repeating pattern to the music. It seems to be playing individual "songs", although no voices or words, and they play one after the other, with, well... not more than a moment's pause between pieces. It has an electronic sound to it, not like what you'd hear on the radio. And it's very upbeat, which is what led me to wonder about the games background music.
Yes, I've looked at the Task Manager, and the Running Tasks and Processes, hoping I might identify the source. But nothing looks suspicious -- it's very much what I typically see there. I've also looked at activity and usage, but I don't really know what to look for there. I don't have a very clear understanding of the different types of memory, and what their values mean.
Regarding interference from a radio or tv, I'm not sure if that's possible. I mean, yes, I know how the intereference happens. I've often picked up CB radio traffic on both tv and radio, from time to time. But both tv and radio contain receivers. I would think a computer would have to have a receiver, to pick up a radio or tv. Oh, and I've also picked up other telephone conversations on my cordless phone (land line). But there again, the phone has some type of receiver, although I imagine it's a bit different than the radio or tv.
When I click my speaker icon, I get one single volume control. If I double-click, I get a set of 5 or 6 controls -- Phone, Line In, CD Player, SW Synth, Wave, and Volume Control. I don't know what Wave and SW Synth mean, and while moving the controls up and down (louder, quieter) had some effect on the music, muting them did not get rid of the music. I already know that my CD Player has no disc. I'm not sure what Line In refers to -- well, I know what it means, but the only line in comes from the phone, my internet connection (dialup). And I do not use the Phone Tools that came with my computer.
All that being said, I did not try muting the Phone control, or Line In, since it did not seem as if they would be connected to this mysterious music. And since I posted this thread, my mouse froze up (touchpad mouse which occassionally create a static discharge, which automatically disables the mouse -- until I restart)(note, this only happens a couple of times per year). So I had to restart my machine, which as I expected, did stop the music. So we may never know....and I hope I do never know! But if it happens again, I will definitely try muting the Line In and Phone controls, just because I can't think of anything else to try.
I would still appreciate any other comments, if anyone has any. But the problem is solved for now, so I would not be able to try any offered solutions (until it happens again).
Thanks again, mitch :flowers:
ya you can try one at a time on the muting of line,mike and such !
line is is a imput from say you were doing recording of a old record, you would use the line jack to input it
so you can usually disable it forever !
line in is like on a componet stereo system, that is your inputs at a fixed level .
and there is possibilities of a computer being a reciever ;-D
remember a square wave is a sum of several harmonics of a frequency ;-D
and back in the early days of cb ( vacuume tubes) they worked on 27 mhz, but withut good filtering they also were working 54 mhz and every harmonic on up ;-D
and it takes very little to "hetrodine" and get into am/fm/tv channels
The way you describe the music, it sounds like Windows' 'Welcome' music that plays after install has finished and while one sets up their user account/activation, etc.
Turn off Windows Sounds, if the music has gone you have a corrupted wav file
hi, james! small world, eh? :)
Well, hopefully it was just some weird glitch. But if it is a corrupted wav file, I'm guessing there's a good chance it will happen again.
But please don't tell me that I have to reinstall Windows, to fix the corrupted file (if that turns out to be the case). If it does happen again, I'm guessing one solution would be to disable Windows sounds permanently.
If I want to continue using the sounds, though, how would I fix the corrupted file?
And just out of curiosity, how do files become corrupted? Is it preventable, or out of our control?
Thank you all very much -- mitch, James, MikeW