My computer is talking to me, or it's possessed

Factual Questions
1

I was looking for a document on my computer - so flipping back and forth among directories - when all of a sudden I heard a voice come out of my computer. I have a laptop, closed in a docking station, and no separate speakers.

It was the text I had typed a little while earlier in a Word doc. The voice said the text. It was a phone message and the voice said exactly what was typed. The Word doc was not saved yet and was on the screen but behind a couple other things.

I’m not crazy. It was definitely the text of my phone message; it didn’t just sorta sound like it, it WAS it. I don’t have a radio or other electronic devices here. I didn’t imagine it. It was a man’s voice, slightly “computer-y.”

How can this happen? I have not installed any kind of text-to-speech program. I don’t know if there are any kind of options in the “accessibility” area in the Control Panel, but I didn’t have it open anyway.

I have a Dell Latitude laptop with WinXP.

If nobody knows, I’m going to assume I need Father Merrin.

2

Windows has a dictation service under the ‘useability’ tools. Many of those tools are easy to accidentally turn on.

The service does exactly what it’s doing for you, it speaks what you are typing or whatever text gets focus.

3

Sounds like you invoked the Narrator, which is a built-in accessibility feature. The keyboard shortcut that you apparently hit is CTRL-SHIFT-SPACE.

Windows Key-U is the shortcut to the accessibility control panel. On my PC, pressing that automatically starts the Narrator, whether I want it or not.

4

That’s the voice! Although I can’t get it to work with ctrl-shift-space - but that’s the directions given in the Accessibility panel, which does come up with Windows-U. I must have hit it accidentally.

I am so glad I have no need for holy water and crucifixes. Phew! :slight_smile:

5

This was a feature that fascinated me as a kid, on the Amiga.
" :eek: I CAN MAKE THE COMPUTER TALK THIS IS ACE OH MY GOD!"

6

The exact same thing happened to a coworker today while I was standing in her cubicle. Thanks to this thread, I knew what it was.

7

Too funny. I had a program on the Commodore 64 that did the same thing. I can remember typing in whole entries from the AD&D Monster Manual II so I could listen to the computer say them.

Why, yes, I was a geek.

8

Yeah, I remember that, and being able to type “I want 2 / your throat” and have the computer speak “I want to slash your throat”

9

How’d that go? “My name is Sam, the talking computer. Type Asterisk to change my voice. Please type something.”

10

Yeah! The thing’s name was SAM! I do remember that…

11

Oh, I had a thing on my Apple IIGS, it was “… Talk, from First Byte.” I can’t remember the first word, but it always started out by telling me its name. It had a picture of a parrot, too.

12

I was sitting here, innocently reading this thread, when my laptop started talking, too!

That’s a weird coincidence, I thought – particularly when all I have open is a couple browser windows, and I haven’t been using the keyboard much.

Then I realized that it was an echo of some people sitting behind me at the coffeehouse! Too weird, until I remembered our webcam. I had our blog open in a browser window, and I was hearing our live webcam feed.

Normally I leave the webcam microphone off, except when we have live music or some other event. Our streaming provider, however, changed their flash programming, and now the microphone is turning on by itself, seemingly in a random fashion.

I’ll have to figure out how this is happening, or disable the microphone somehow, because I’m on and off the blog all day, and I don’t like voices coming from my PC.