SillyDog701

[gaia1muse]

For 15 years (through 3 laptops) my computer has made random sounds -- it used be three descending notes played twice. Then about two years ago, that changed and it started to say "mom" every once in a while in a plaintive voice. Just this morning it started making bird tweets.

I've pretty much checked all sound possibilities -- but note that this is random -- I may be in the kitchen eating and suddenly the computer says "mom" out of nowhere.

I was thinking it might be an easter egg that I somehow launched (what happened to those? are they still around?) but on every computer I own? And if it's an unknown virus it does nothing else -- and it's very old. Besides I wipe my drive on regular basis...and reinstall programs and data.

After 15 years I have yet to see anything posted about this on the web -- and today after the birds showed up I thought I'd finally see if anyone has the same thing or know why this happens.

UserAgent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; .NET CLR 1.0.3705; Media Center PC 4.0; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)

[PaulD]

Do you have AOL?

See the Wednesday, August 20, 2008 entry here.


(Edit by Antony: link changed to direct link to blog entry)

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[Antony]

Thanks Paul,

When I first read this, I thought it was a sound from something else, such as a leaking pipe or else. I never knew that you could specify your sign-in sound in AIM.

(I changed the link to the direct article link to make it easier.)

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[gaia1muse]

Well, I'll be. Thanks for your replies -- and I did find 2 of the sounds on AOL -- so that's it. If you know how to block it great, if not I'll suss it out at some point -- I was actually more curious as to what it was.

But the last sound is not AOL - and I don't know why, but it sounds like a OS prompt to me -- three descending notes played twice -- except that it's totally random when it plays -- I might be off in the living room. And it is the oldest one -- going back -- oh -- to 1995 -- well before AOL had buddies.

If anybody else has ideas please let me know - but thank you so much for solving the other mysteries!

And BTW, does anybody know if there ARE any easter eggs on Windows XP?

UserAgent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; .NET CLR 1.0.3705; Media Center PC 4.0; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)

[PaulD]

"If you know how to block it great, ... "
- Quoting from the referenced blog entry:
--- "Someone on my buddy list had been using those sounds. ... I thinned my buddy list."
- If the party is a real buddy, s/he will change to a more conventional notification sound. (And it is probable that others also are annoyed.)
- Your evaluation.

The third sound ---
- Is there any pattern to the timing? For a week, record the time of every instance that you hear, then review.
- Is your email client 'always on'? Do you find a new email available after each chime?
- Do you have an anti-virus client that auto-updates?
- Do you have some other process always running?
- What do you have at: Start > Control Panel > Scheduled Tasks ?

Edit addition ---
"it sounds like a OS prompt to me"
- Start > Control Panel > Sounds and Audio Devices > (tab) Sounds
- In the 'Program Events:' window, click on each of the events that has a little speaker icon associated. The sound file that is invoked is identified in the 'Sounds:' window. Play every one of these (click on the button with the right-pointing triangle to the right). If the chime that you hear in fact is from Windows, then it should be one of these events. If you can get a match, then you have identified which Windows Event is the cause. Be sure to review the entire list as it is possible that more than one event may use the same sound file.

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