Windows XP forum: Brand new HP MAKES WEIRD NOISES

Since it is under warranty, call HP.

I sometimes really wish I knew how all these strange symptoms get associated with computer viruses. From a sociotechnical perspective, I'm sure it'd be fascinating.

A good computer virus will not show any symptoms at all until it's too late and it's done its damage. If it's a well crafted virus, the first you'll ever know of it, is when your system crashes and won't boot again.

Some of the more poorly written might cause your system to slow down, or you might notice some missing or corrupted files.

Not even the worst written virus should be causing any sounds to emanate from your computer. Besides that, viruses are on the way out. The time and effort it takes to write them is too high, and few "hackers" today have that level of skill. Just like the rest of computerdom, Microsoft and Apple have sucessfully dumbed down would-be hackers and virus writers. If you remember back to around 98-99, when the Melissa email worm was national news because of how many companies were affected the world over... You have to remember that the actual worm was only a few dozen lines of badly written VBScript code. Same with the half dozen or so copycat variants that followed. Why spend days or weeks writing a virus, when a few dozen lines of VBScript code will be so wildly destructive? "Hackers" today would be lost if not for the skills of a very limited few, who create programs that do all the actual work of hacking, using known exploits of programs. Everyone else just clicks a few buttons.

All that aside, from what you describe, I'd have to say that it sounds like your monitor might be going titsup. But it's important to figure out where exactly the buzzing sound is coming from. The monitor, inside the computer case... If so, where inside the case? It might be a fan that's got bearings on the verge of seizing up, and the screensaver causes that fan to kick into high gear. It could even be one of those seemingly fluke events, in that the screensaver causes an increase in the power draw, and it's just the exact right voltage to cause a harmonic resonation due to other factors that are all just right.

I find that weird noises can occur if your PC is obsctructed in some way, make sure nothing is covering the fan, and move it around abit to see if the noise stops. It's the best I can think of.

Thanks for the info guys. I heard from one guy that video cards can have something to do with it. I hope it didn't happen when i was playing half life 2 starting last week. I have a 128mb card, and half life 2 is meant to be played with a 256 card. It wasn't a very beautiful combination. is it possible that something like that ahd something to do with it?

richard

said that it only happened while using the screensaver. I wouldn't expect damage, just some extreme video processing demand with the screen saver. Does it do it for all screensavers???

You probably really should take advantage of your warranty.