I am probably paranoid now but...

15 years ago

Two weeks ago, my Dell XPS 400 Desktop running Windows XP Pro started making a noise while I was restarting it & froze. Did it one more time before it just booted fine as usual. No problem since but, I am now paranoid and would like to identify the sound/beep.

I know that certain sounds (beeps) mean certain problems but, since the PC no longer makes the noise when booting, I can no longer trace the sound to a problem with a specific component.

I have been going through the Internet trying to locate a website that might have this sort of information. Meaning, a link that plays a sound file with the possible sounds that I could hear from my PC. No luck there. Got bored looking around Dell's Support Website.

Any suggestions? TIA, Luis

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Comments (4)

owbist
15 years ago
You could check the Event Viewer - click Start, click Control panel, click Administrative rights, click Event viewer, click System on the left side. Now scroll down thew right side looking for red Error marks, double click on these and a short explanation appears along with another link to the net for a fuller explanation.

When some computers start and the BIOS seeks the drives there can be a clicking type sound as the floppy drive is found and spun up momentarily. Do you have a floppy drive?

If thee are beeps you need to count and differentiate between long and short beeps. There are a set of beep codes if this is what is happening.

Does it sound like a software generated sound or perhaps a grinding or rubbing sound?

What was on the screen when the computer froze? Could you alt/ctrl/del out or did you have to use the on/off switch on the front of the tower.
luis_pr
Original Author
15 years ago
Thanks for your reply, owbist.

The Event Viewer had, under errors, a DciVecp service that failed because a file was not found. This has occurred multiple times since around the time of the beeping sound's first occurrence (I am not sure of the exact date/time any more). I did scan the Event Viewer information until I reached the last posted message and that item was the only Error-type of message; a few Warnings sounded lack of Internet connectivity issues and a bunch of Information-al messages (I skipped reading those).

The sounds was a long beeping sound, not a clicking sound. It occurred when the Windows was loading and the Windows XP Pro Logo was displayed. The Welcome Screen had not displayed yet.

Yes, the PC has a floppy drive but I do not think that is the source of the long sound. None of the components has ever issued that long sound before. Once the PC started making the sound, it continued and the screen looked frozen.

There are long and short beeps you say? Hmm. This sounded like a long beep but I seem to remember some additional beeps imbeded. It may have been the short beeps that you are talking about.

I am not used to software generated sounds so I will just say no to that question and to the grinding/rubbing sound. By the way, I now have a WD External Hard Drive that I use to back up the PC's internal HDD using Acronis. This unit was added hours after the incident.

As mentioned earlier, the Windows XP Pro Logo was on the screen at the time. What I call a "progress bar" was also being displayed as well and it was displaying as usual. The progress bar fills up with blue squares and resets empty to start again. It did this several times, as usual. But on the last display, on the last half an inch or so of the prograess bar, it stopped changing and the sound started. I rebooted using the power on/off button.
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owbist
15 years ago
Luis if this event was 2 weeks ago and nothing has occurred since I might be inclined to do nothing myself. As you found this in the Event viewer when was the last time it was listed?

You could read the attached link and see if thie ciovers your issue. Whether or not you try the fix is entirely up to you. Do you have either ViewAheadÂs TeamMFP software or some
FujiXerox Workcenter program installed? The Viewahead could be part of the printer programs installed

Here is a link that might be useful: DciVecp service failed, a fix
luis_pr
Original Author
15 years ago
Interesting. But no, those are new software names for me. And I do not have any hardware from them either!!

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