# My Computer Squeaks At Me. O_o



## Vgm22 (Jul 1, 2007)

Ok, I'm going to turn to the tech people here as to why this happens.

My computer squeaks at me sometimes. It all started after my Norton's caught and killed a Trojan virus, trying to get into my computer. After restarting my computer when it told me to, so it could finish removing the virus, I think everything is fine, cause whatever that virus was doing it was lagging my computer majorly. I mean my CPU usage was at 100% and staying steady. My web browse keeped crashing, my connetion to my Belkin wireless card keeped dropping and not reconneting, among a whole bunch of other things. Well after getting rid of the virus and thinking everything is normal, I get this mouse squeaking sound from time to time. I can just be sitting by my computer watching TV with nothing running and out from the speakers comes a mouse sqeaking sound. Other times the sound happens when I minimize a window or open one. Now the only programs I keep in my tool tray are YIM,AIM,MSNM, Norton's Protection Center and my Belkin Wireless Connection. Don't know if it's one of them doing the noise or not. I just want to figure out what that noise is and how to get rid of it. If ya can figure out what it is and help me that'd be great. ^^ Though I've already asked some of my computer tech friends and they don't know what it could be and even gave me somethings to do. Done everything they told me to do and  the sound is still there. Though my CPU process went down and everything runs smoothly now, it's just that damned noise happens every now and then and I want to know what it is? Is it something hiding in my computer or what?


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## HaTcH (Jul 1, 2007)

Ok, if it's coming from your speakers theres a few things that might cause this.

#1. Your speaker wire passes near something with a large magnetic or electrical field. Running data cables near AC power wires is bad, and can cause eddy currents in the wires to pop or buzz your speakers, or just cause general interference.

#2. (probably not the case) Lightly shielded computer speaker wire is susceptible to cellular radiation. Ever here that sound, almost like Morse code come through speakers (specially, amplified speakers) and then a second later someone near that computer gets a cell call? Thats whats going on there.

solutions to 1 and 2: Re organize your cabling, keep speaker, network, similar data cables away from AC or telephone, even coaxial cable.

#3. Sometimes, various audio ports on your sound card get enabled for no reason. I've noticed with my computer, if I leave the 'TAD-In' input channel open when I'm not using it, I'll get a low buzz noise that happens when the mouse moves. Same can be true for any 'Auxiliary' ports and Microphones. Basically, mute everything you don't use. PCM (if you have it, is for MP3s and similar audio) and thats probably the only thing you should keep un-muted. And maybe MIDI.

#4. Could be a case/cooling fan going on you. They've been known to growl, chirp and squeak some times, usually when the bearings are shot or going. Replacements are cheap, most of the time. This is also more likely on the processor than anywhere else. Considering your computer was being taxed 100% all the time for a duration of time, the heat generated by the CPU that might not have been dissipating heat very effectively (dust... it gets caked on), which may have actually damaged the bearing in your fan.


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## Vgm22 (Jul 1, 2007)

Well my speakers are new and it never done this before when I had it on the ground, before I got my computer desk. Like I said before the mouse squeaking sound all started after that trojan virus attack on my computer. Besides I always clean out my computer and check the parts to see if they need to be replace and my fan is fine, so that's not the source of the sound. I'm thinking it's left overs of the trojan attack, cause one of the friends I talked to said it could be that. I reran my Norton's after he said that and nothing came up, but one minor thing, but I fixed and the sound still presists.


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## Swampwulf (Jul 1, 2007)

I ran across a similar issue a few years back when I was running an Internet Cafe.
Had a machine completely borked by some horny Marine that went to some especially nasty websites and managed to get the machine totally hose due to pop-ups installing some nasty things on it.
I tried everything I could to clean it up rather than reformatting it and installing everything fresh.
Turns out that, even after getting it all cleaned up, one of the registry setting had been changed and was causing the machine to continue to try and dial out through the modem, and as it didn't have a modem it had defaulted to the sound card and made the machine 'squeek'.

That was the final straw for me and I made the owner buy enough licenses to 'Ghost' every machine in the Cafe so hat if I had any more problems I just stuck in the restore disc and let it do it's thing.

I hate to suggest it, but you might consider backing up all of your data, wiping the machine, and install everything from scratch.


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## Vgm22 (Jul 1, 2007)

-nods- I'm thinking about doing that. Though I really don't want to too. As I have to wait to buy some cds to burn as data disks and it seems the burning softwear I use isn't working. Even after I uninstalled/reinstalled it. It seems when one thing goes wrong and I fix it something else goes wrong and doesn't want to be fixed when I try and fix it, every way  possible.


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## Kougar (Jul 1, 2007)

I might suggest you try turning your speaker volume to zero, and only then opening up you windows volume controls (And any others you may have in sound drivers). Max out the "Master Volume" and the "WAVE" volume to 100%. Carefully turn your speakers back up until you can hear sounds like normal, and see if you can still hear any of this squeaking. 

Any computer using onboard sound will actually generate electrical noise that the onboard sound card will pick up and transfer into the computer speakers... almost all users never notice it because it requires the speaker volume to be set very high, usually deafening levels and the windows volume/wave volume controls to be almost at zero. I can listen to my own mouse cursor move across my screen, and hear everything from clicks to minimizing and maximizing windows, dragging objects around my screen, starting a program, or just about anything... (I use a wireless mouse too, mind you) It depends on the quality of the onboard sound card and the speakers used as well, but even the newest onboard sound cards built into a motherboard will still have this to some minute degree.  This is why many users prefer to add a discrete sound card to their systems to better isolate it from system noise.


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## HaTcH (Jul 1, 2007)

To be honest, I have a PCI sound card.. I still hear all that garbage. Perhaps moving it to a farther away from the CPU PCI slot might help...


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## Vgm22 (Jul 1, 2007)

I don't really think it has anything to do with my sound card or anything like that. It's very brief and is not constant. Like I said the sound started after that trojan virus attack on my computer. The sound mostly happens when I minimize or x outta a window. It sound like a mouse runs in, looks at you and squeaks like it's saying hello and then runs away. Kinda like it does in a cartoon squeaking manner. If I could just figure out how to find a sound file that sounds like it, I could play it, so you'd know what it sounds like. Then maybe you could figure out what's going on.


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## brokenfox (Jul 1, 2007)

Did you check for mice? 

J/K...This is a weird one to tell you the truth. The first thing that I would do is try to find out if it is a hardware or software issue. Try to boot the computer in safe mode and try to make the sound appear again. If it doesn't then it is definitely something running on your computer. If it does then it could still be software or hardware. If you have other speakers or a sound card try those. If you are familiar with a CD operating system like Ubuntu or something boot up into that and see if you can recreate the problem, if you can then it is definitely a hardware issue.

If none of that helps or something weird happens report back and let us know =^.^=


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## Vgm22 (Jul 1, 2007)

Hmm...Well the sound hasn't sounded in a bit of time like it has, so whatever it was is probably gone as I have been trying to recreate it and it's not going on. Though I am not familiar with a CD operating system like Ubuntu or any others for that matter, so that's out. If I hear that sound again I'll probably come back here and talk to you guys again. Cause I don't want to have to talk to the Geek Squad as they always push at you using them and they are expensive. Hell, I've even told the one I was talking to on there live IM thing they have and told them I had no money and they keeped pushing. I just disconnected from it after I said to the guy, "What part of I have no money do you not understand?!" This was another problem I was having with my computer though.


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## brokenfox (Jul 1, 2007)

Heh, yah I have heard many a horror story about Geek Squad. 

Just let us know if you need some more help =^.^=


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## Vgm22 (Jul 1, 2007)

Will do! ^^


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## Ron Overdrive (Jul 1, 2007)

brokenfox said:
			
		

> Heh, yah I have heard many a horror story about Geek Squad.
> 
> Just let us know if you need some more help =^.^=



Heh, I knew people who worked in Geeksquad. If you're forced to goto them make sure you demand they delete any backups after they're done fixing it. I can't begin to tell you how many terras I've been shown of backups they keep. Its like a private porn/music cache for them.


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## Vgm22 (Jul 1, 2007)

LMAO! That's ok! They can have all my furry porn and the music I have! XD Hell, who knows if one of the guys or a few of them are furry. That's if I go to them.


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## DavidN (Jul 2, 2007)

I may be a bit late for this, but try downloading HijackThis (http://www.hijackthis.de) and using it to examine the processes that are running on your computer. If there's anything unusual there it'll highlight it, and presumably for anything to periodically make a squeaking noise it would have to be running constantly in the background somewhere.

(Often they're disguised as things with similar names to system processes like ntdll.dll, svchost.exe and so on - be careful of these, as my brother, in a stroke of genius, once used the program to delete the real ones).


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## HaTcH (Jul 2, 2007)

To take Brokenfox's suggestion a bit further, why not try another operating system all together? You can boot some distro of Linux off a CD, without doing anything more than sticking the CD in your tray. It doesn't screw with your files or anything unless you install. So it's completely safe. You can even browse the net. So long as your sound card isn't some obscure thing that came in 1 computer model in 1998, then sound should also work. This way, if your comp does squeak, you know its hardware and not the OS, as it would be impossible for the virus to be affecting Linux running from a liveCD.

I recommend Ubuntu or Kubuntu as they are like.. the easiest and possibly best supported distros out there.


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## Vgm22 (Jul 2, 2007)

DavidN said:
			
		

> I may be a bit late for this, but try downloading HijackThis (http://www.hijackthis.de) and using it to examine the processes that are running on your computer. If there's anything unusual there it'll highlight it, and presumably for anything to periodically make a squeaking noise it would have to be running constantly in the background somewhere.
> 
> (Often they're disguised as things with similar names to system processes like ntdll.dll, svchost.exe and so on - be careful of these, as my brother, in a stroke of genius, once used the program to delete the real ones).



I'll keep that link in mind if the sound should happen again. Plus what other processes should I look out for that are the real ones that would totally mess up my computer if I deleted them, like the ones you said?



			
				HaTcH said:
			
		

> To take Brokenfox's suggestion a bit further, why not try another operating system all together? You can boot some distro of Linux off a CD, without doing anything more than sticking the CD in your tray. It doesn't screw with your files or anything unless you install. So it's completely safe. You can even browse the net. So long as your sound card isn't some obscure thing that came in 1 computer model in 1998, then sound should also work. This way, if your comp does squeak, you know its hardware and not the OS, as it would be impossible for the virus to be affecting Linux running from a liveCD.
> 
> I recommend Ubuntu or Kubuntu as they are like.. the easiest and possibly best supported distros out there.



Well I'm only partial to using windows as other OS, I haven't use. I wouldn't want to accidently install another OS (Cause I am accident prone sometimes, like I hit a key I wans't supposed to or my figure slips when I'm moving the mouse and I click on thing) and get rid or XP which I have now, since I downloaded XP with Limewire and used a key-gen to the activation key, since I'm poor. Though I will keep that in mind and read up on those two and use that method if the sound happens again. ^^


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## DavidN (Jul 2, 2007)

It's a bit difficult to provide a guide to the processes, but you can copy and paste the logfile that HijackThis generates into the online reader - then it'll give a summary of what's safe and what looks dodgy.


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## Ron Overdrive (Jul 2, 2007)

Vgm22: K/Ubuntu won't install unless you click the icon on the desktop that says "Install to Hard Disk" and even then you have the option to cancel out before actually installing.


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## Vgm22 (Jul 2, 2007)

Thanks you two. ^^ Those all are good things to know.


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## Ron Overdrive (Jul 3, 2007)

Forgot to mention that Linux at this point (as long as you stick to KDE or Gnome for the interface) is pretty much the same as windows for basic desktop use. Its just single click instead of double click which you can change in the desktop settings window.


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## Vgm22 (Jul 3, 2007)

Cool! ^^ The more easier the OS is the better.


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## HaTcH (Jul 4, 2007)

Actually, before I started using Linux, I used to keep a few liveCDs around, they were gentoo at that point, but I'd use it to fix stuff on computers. You can mount FAT/32 partitions (IE, access your hard drives) on linux and be able to write/read them. This was a nice thing for removing viruses. 

NTFS, at this point, is only purely read. Writing is kinda dodgey still. But if you had to get in and recover a file or files, you can copy off of the NTFS and onto like a CD or something. So it's useful for backing things up too. 

You see, if your windows partitions are corrupted or infected by viruses, there's no danger of those viruses getting into linux. Windows programs must be run in a windows environment (or a shell, which you can do in linux) and therefore, you're in no danger of infecting backups (unless, you copied the viruses!). On the flip side, a virus in windows cannot access linux partitions, so long as they arent FAT/32 or NTFS. While it is possible to get at linux files from windows, doing so is not lightweight, and would never be built into like.. 99.99% of viruses.


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## Vgm22 (Jul 4, 2007)

Interesting. Do you think making back-up data disks are good? Plus what should go one one if I do do a back-up disk?


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## HaTcH (Jul 4, 2007)

Well, the best thing to back up are things you've made yourself. Save images and documents. Also, backup any media files you have. Music, home movies... prons..  If you play video games, you might want to backup saved games and configurations. If you know where program settings are stored, save them too. (Though they shouldn't be on your hard drive... *raises an eyebrow*) save any CD-keys or serial numbers for programs. That way, you can always reinstall them.

Don't worry about backing up the OS directory, theres typically nothing in there the user would need to save.

Save your desktop wall paper!!! I can recall the frustration of .. oh crap! Where'd I get that wp from???

In windows, the single best thing to backup is the Cocuments and Settings<username> folder. That contains most of what I mentioned... usually. Program save games and other stuff might exist somewhere within the bowels of Crogram Files...

AIM MSN, and others store your buddy list online, so you don't need to save that, but you might want to save your logs. Y'never know.


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## Vgm22 (Jul 4, 2007)

Thanks for those suggestions. I'll keep them in mind. ^^


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## codewolf (Jul 4, 2007)

i''v recently had this...only seems to happen when i have AIM open though so far


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## Vgm22 (Jul 4, 2007)

Well it seems to happen to me when I'm just sitting there doing nothing, I'm minimizing or xing out a window. Though it hasn't been happening for a while.


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## codewolf (Jul 9, 2007)

Vgm22 said:
			
		

> Well it seems to happen to me when I'm just sitting there doing nothing, I'm minimizing or xing out a window. Though it hasn't been happening for a while.



i just had a thought..do you have damaratus added to your AIM??
as whenever he signs in it does the mouse squeeking think on my pc....it may be his sign in sound


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## Bloodangel (Jul 9, 2007)

Your computer squeaks? I think you just have a hungry mouse. Leave some cheese beside it and walk away. 

If the cheese is gone when you come back, either my insane ramblings are true or I'm running down your street with a free supply of cheese!


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## Vgm22 (Jul 9, 2007)

codewolf said:
			
		

> I just had a thought..do you have damaratus added to your AIM??
> as whenever he signs in it does the mouse squeeking think on my pc....it may be his sign in sound.



Yeah, I do have him on AIM, though it could be him and I thought it was him, so one day I just stared at my AIM list waiting for him to come on and it didn't make that sound.




			
				Bloodangel said:
			
		

> Your computer squeaks? I think you just have a hungry mouse. Leave some cheese beside it and walk away.
> 
> If the cheese is gone when you come back, either my insane ramblings are true or I'm running down your street with a free supply of cheese!



I tried doing that already! XD I walked away and went to watch tv in the living room for a while. When I came back the cheese was still there, so I ate it as it looked delicious and I eas hungry.

Well your only going to be getting an american cheese slice, if you were to take it. Plus me running after you. -grins- You don't wanna know what I'll do to you once I catch you.


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## codewolf (Jul 10, 2007)

Vgm22 said:
			
		

> codewolf said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



i believe it only makes the sound when the window is minimised....sort of like the MSN convo window notification


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## Vgm22 (Jul 10, 2007)

Maybe, but I do have a friend that when he comes online on my AIM hid name makes a wolf howling noise. It makes it either if my AIM list is minimised or not.


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## HaTcH (Jul 12, 2007)

I would find that stuff very irritating... XP

<-- *Old fashioned bum... Been using Trillian .74 since as long as he could remember*

No funkyness. Heck, I can't even do file transfers. Only chat  I'd upgrade to Trillian 3... if they'd make the Cordilla skin from Trillian .74 for it.


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## Vgm22 (Jul 12, 2007)

I have all 3 of my messengers seperate. I don't use Trillin or any of those other programs.


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