+1

This goes for all who have computer files that are important to them. Every hard drive WILL fail at some point. I've been the victim of numerous HD failures from respected brands after relatively short periods of use. Back your data up!

Do your speakers use a power device to amplify them or do you run your speaker wires next to any power cords? If the speaker wires are running next to your speaker wires are the speaker wires shielded?

The bit light you are referring to. Is this one of the system/diagnostic lights (yellow or green) or are you referring to the disk access light (red)?

Green, next to the Power Indicator.

It seems to be fairly consistant, the second light is PCI Bus.

There is some hardware problem, but that doesn't mean that it is the motherboard and the entire PC has to be replaced. It could be the hard drive, power, video card etc.

If it was my chassis I would install a POST analyser card and check codes. Chances are whatever is going bad will throw a code during power up.

Here is one of the cards (I have this one and it is very useful):
http://www.pcconnection.com/ProductD...ourceID=k40132

You can usually pick them up for about $25/$35 and they will save you a bundle in self-troubleshooting.

I would still advise doing backups ;)

HTH

Try unplugging the speakers and cleaning the jack and if the wire dissconencts from the speaker, clean that end too. I have a similar recurring problem in that when I scroll my mouse while music or movie is on, I get static and sound cutouts that correspond to the scrolling of the mouse. I clean it and it goes away. I have no idea why it happens and I'm too cheap to get new speakers. This is on a systme that is less than 6 moths old.

AM,
This may seem like the most bizarre question, but does it correlate with you turning on or off lights (ie: desk laps etc) near your computer/speakers? For some reason, that can have a similar effect.

Either way, as everyone has said back up your files-- although I'm sure you're doing that already.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Years (hopefully minus computer trouble),

Solid

Made any progress?

Do you have wireless cards in your chassis? I can correlate some of the symptoms you have mentioned in a few ways if you have some sort of wireless board in the chassis.

Zero correlation to anything.



I do have a wireless card.

See if there are any diagnostic tools provided by the vendor for your card.

Here is my theory (one of them, other than HD).

1) external interference causing excessive retransmits. Poor quality/high interference is typically corrected by progressively increasing power. Once errors subsist or some other acceptable condition, power is reduced.

2) High error rate on the wireless card may result in a sluggish system. Taking up CPU/Memory to handle the retrans.

3) Wireless card and proximity to the speaker cable. Due to increased power for transmits the speaker cable may be picking up the interference.

4) Why you may be getting interference? Something external, which is hard to test for, or the oscialltor may be failing on the card and not holding clock sync. Progressive slips increase causing errors until the max threshold is reached, at which time the sync window resets and the process restarts.

Try monitoring the network statistics for errors. In the cmd window try netstat -e or netstat -s (can't recall off hand which is the stats for windows)). Look at errors. See if there is any noticeable change during the "spasms".

If you can connect directly using RJ-11 and disable the wireless card that is also something you might want to consider; at least eliminate things.

Many Thanks.

I'll mess with it this weekend. I think that I'll just disconnect the card first to see what happens. I'm also going to give the internals a good vacuuming, after the other troubleshooting, or maybe before, but not all at the same time!!

I'll keep y'all posted as this progresses.

Again, Thanks.
Martin

OK!!!!! IT'S FIXED!!!!!:D :lifter :munchin

How'd ya fix it....HAMMER or .45 ??? :munchin

Would've been neither, I'm a 9mm type!!:D

A couple of months ago, an internal CD Drive acted up and was running at high speed anytime the computer was turned on. I simply pulled it's power cord and didn't think any more about it. Apparently this "Heartbeat" pulse has been hiding in the shadows since then. This drive had a cord that plugged into the Sound Card, so this afternoon, I unplugged it while cleaning the internals. No more Heartbeat, so I plugged it back in and noise returned, unplugged again, ALL GONE!!!

Apparently the amp in the drive, while unbiased due to no power, was creating a ground loop effect with the Sound Card and generated the random noise. It did affect the speed of the system and really slowed things down. All is GREAT NOW!!!