A few weeks ago, my computer suddenly started making noise when the top is closed. It will sound off two or three times every two or three minutes. It’s the standard “bong” warning sound that it also makes for a number of other tasks, such as turning all sound on and off. I normally have it set to sleep when the top is closed.
The only change that I can think of from around that time was my husband’s new XBox 360. As soon as he set it up on the network my laptop recognized it and asked me to hook it up (I had no idea it was going to do that, btw. ). I started going through the steps but stopped halfway through - it needed some work done on the XBox’s side and the husband was playing Assassin’s Creed by that time. Canceling the process had seemed to leave me back at the beginning (with a icon in the tray asking me if I wanted to hook the XBox up), but it had already messed with my sleep and hibernation settings. I manually changed those back a few days later.
Two days ago, annoyed and assuming that the problem was related to the unfinished process, I finally went through with hooking the two machines together. The bonging has not stopped though, so it’s entirely possible that the timing was a coincidence.
I don’t see any other obvious programs running that might be the source of the problem. Any ideas on how to figure this one out?
Well to get this party started and bump the thread, open up the sound properties in control panel and look for actions that are assigned to that sound.
Are you talking about the Windows standard default ding?
You could also change a few of them to something different and see if the unauthorized sound changes.
Don’t stop at checking for running apps in the task manager, check the processes also.
Open up the Windows Event Viewer and see if there’s anything interesting in there.
I’ve dealt with this question a few times before and in all of those cases, it turned out to be the instant messaging client (usually MSN/Windows Live Messenger) announcing that one of the user’s contacts had come online - It actually doesn’t sound like this is too likely a possibility here, but I thought I’d throw it out there to be eliminated from the enquiry…
Skype has a setting to bong if there is an incoming request for details…
Is your husband’s XBox 360 hooked up for online play, or only to use your laptop as the display, or what?
If it’s online is there any chance there is a setting to notify the user when an inbound request to play comes in?
I am with Mangetout here if you don’t think it’s a process specific to the computer itself…noone messed with the setting that prevents auto-anything just because the lid is closed (under the Advanced settings for Power schemes as I recall…)
You can go through the “Windows Events” (is defenestration a Windows event?) and see if anything strikes you as a likely candidate–
Start • Control Panel (or Start • Settings • Control Panel)
Show Classic view, if necessary
Open Sounds and Audio Devices
Choose second tab at the top - Sounds
The events (Log on, off, error, etc) are listed. Although I do not use IM, I’d guess that IM events ahould be listed here. My PDA’s ActiveSync events showed up when I loaded the software, f’rinstance.
Events with an associated sound file will display the speaker icon. You can change an event’s associated WAV file. If you do so and your “bong” changes, you’ve identified the correct event
You can identify the name of your “Bong” WAV file here as well.
I wanted to thank you guys. It actually took me a little while to notice that I had in fact gotten some advice in this thread - I got discouraged and gave up checking that day after several hours of lots of views and no replies.
Going back and forth between the system sound settings and the event viewer (with a lot of closing the lid in between), I eventually managed to determine that I was hearing “Device Disconnect - Device Disconnect Device Disconnect - Device Connect”, and match that up to four error messages of various degrees of importance that are showing up in the log. Now, fixing those won’t necessarily be easy (other than the one where it’s trying to connect to the 360 when it’s off), but at least I know where to start now!
I’ve been getting that device connect/disconnect with no message, too, but I couldn’t identify it until now. Thanks for the suggestion of going through the event sounds.
). I started going through the steps but stopped halfway through - it needed some work done on the XBox’s side and the husband was playing Assassin’s Creed by that time. Canceling the process had seemed to leave me back at the beginning (with a icon in the tray asking me if I wanted to hook the XBox up), but it had already messed with my sleep and hibernation settings. I manually changed those back a few days later.