Very Rapid Dinging

[seekermeister]

I just rebooted to XP MCE on my secondary rig, after connecting an ESATCASE2 external case, and now when I select various things on the OS...like the Start Menu or a lot of other things, it starts dinging like a doorbell. Powering off the external drive doesn't change anything. I have never heard a sound like this before and don't think that it is anything controllable via the sound wizard in the Control Panel. Anyone have any idea of what this is, or how to get rid of it?

 

[Jonathan_King]

It sounds like perhaps a program is causing that. First, try disabling system sounds comletely; just set the scheme to None.

You might also try a system restore, and if you installed any software with the external drive, remove that.

 

[seekermeister]

I just restored to yesterday, and it still rings the bell. Disabling the sound scheme, or muting Wave in the Audio Control Panel eliminates the sound, but curiously, when I attempted to change individual sounds in the sound wizard, the window rapidly filled with "2s", and apparently used them, instead of letting me choose, because it said that it was an invalid entry.

Obviously, something is awry, but if the system restore didn't handle it, it sounds as though something is wrong with the hardware. I wish that I could boot to W7, but I have that drive out right now, because of problems with it.

 

[Jonathan_King]

You might try a system files check, although you'll need the XP CD. Run sfc /scannow from the command prompt.

 

[seekermeister]

Maybe not, but I'm getting a feeling that a virus or malware of some kind of involved, because the problems seem to be growing. On the previous boot, there was an alert that the AV wasn't running, and I had to enable it in Windows. On the last boot, Outpost Security Suite popped an alert saying that the sandbox.sys was disabled. Too many things of different kinds going haywire for it to be just one simple problem. It seems strange that this problem didn't immerge until I connected the external case, but that must be a coincidence.

 

[Jonathan_King]

Yeah, good thought. Do a scan, and see what turns up. I recommend Malwarebytes, but use whatever you want.

 

[zigzag3143]

I just rebooted to XP MCE on my secondary rig, after connecting an ESATCASE2 external case, and now when I select various things on the OS...like the Start Menu or a lot of other things, it starts dinging like a doorbell. Powering off the external drive doesn't change anything. I have never heard a sound like this before and don't think that it is anything controllable via the sound wizard in the Control Panel. Anyone have any idea of what this is, or how to get rid of it?

Almost sounds like a stuck keyboard or the accessibility keys. the "2"'s are the give away.

 

[seekermeister]

I just rebooted to XP MCE on my secondary rig, after connecting an ESATCASE2 external case, and now when I select various things on the OS...like the Start Menu or a lot of other things, it starts dinging like a doorbell. Powering off the external drive doesn't change anything. I have never heard a sound like this before and don't think that it is anything controllable via the sound wizard in the Control Panel. Anyone have any idea of what this is, or how to get rid of it?

Almost sounds like a stuck keyboard or the accessibility keys. the "2"'s are the give away.

I thought about that, but it appears that the 2 key is normal. Even if it is stuck, it doesn't seem that would account for the variety of problems going on.

 

[seekermeister]

Yeah, good thought. Do a scan, and see what turns up. I recommend Malwarebytes, but use whatever you want.

I agree about Malwarebytes, but don't have it installed at the moment. Even though OSS said that it was partially disabled because of the sandbox.sys, I'm running a scan with it, thinking that the sandbox.sys isn't involved in detecting, only in isolating.

Afterward, I will install both Malwarebytes and SpyBot and see what they say.

 

[seekermeister]

I can't install anything right now, because the file managers, as well as a number of other things will no longer work. I ran chkdsk /r and it reports alls well. I tried to run SFC /SCANNOW, but everytime that it wants to copy a file, it says that either I have the wrong disk, or sometimes that I need the SP3 disk. I have tried both disk 1 and 2 of the primary CDs, and the SP3 disk also, but it isn't happy with any of them. It seems that no matter what I try, I run into a brick wall.

 

[Jonathan_King]

Try running a bootable malware scanner, such as F-Secure.

 

[seekermeister]

Bootable huh? I went to the F Secure website, and all that I found was a trial installation of the program, that was to install in the OS, not a CD or floppy. Where do I find a bootable version?

 

[seekermeister]

Okay, I found the bootable version, but one thing I noted in the instructions was that it renames any infected files that it finds, and might cause the OS to be unbootable afterward. Maybe it's six of one or half dozen of the other, but I don't like the idea.

 

[zigzag3143]

i can't install anything right now, because the file managers, as well as a number of other things will no longer work. I ran chkdsk /r and it reports alls well. I tried to run sfc /scannow, but everytime that it wants to copy a file, it says that either i have the wrong disk, or sometimes that i need the sp3 disk. I have tried both disk 1 and 2 of the primary cds, and the sp3 disk also, but it isn't happy with any of them. It seems that no matter what i try, i run into a brick wall.

so you are running xp ??????

 

[seekermeister]

As I explained previously, the OS in question is XP MCE.

 

[Jonathan_King]

Just read whatever log it gives carefully. If it's renaming them, instead of deleting them, it means it has the intention that you restore whatever file it renamed, if they are clean.

Make a note of what files it renames, and if you can't boot, rename the files with the command prompt.

 

[seekermeister]

Not knowing where it might put a log, nor how to rename the files, if I couldn't boot, I decided to run a couple of online AV scanners instead. They found nothing of importance, except 4 application files in my download archive. bit they shouldn't have had anything to do with the problem. After finding that things seemed to work okay, when booted into safe mode, I ran another restore to a few days earlier. Rebooting back to my user account, I found that things seemed to be back as they should be, but I will reserve judgment on that for a while.

I still have no idea of what went wrong, except that I noticed that the letter ID for my download archive had changed from D: to O: I changed that back in Disk Management, but rebooting again, after reconnecting the external case, I found D: back to O: again...quirky!