I have a Dell M65 laptop at work. It will (apparently randomly) make a strange beeping sound a few times during the day. I have tried several web searches on this, and there are lots of different reasons why laptops beep, but most of them either don't apply, or I tried the solutions and they didn't work.
What the problem is:
-At various times when I'm sitting in front of my laptop (in it's Dell docking station), I will hear a short beep. I do not have any speakers attached to the laptop.
-The beep sounds like it's coming from the front left part of the laptop.
-It is a funny sounding beep; it resembles some of the game music that early PC games had before they invented sound cards. It also resembles the chirping, fluttery beep you can get if you hold down a bunch of keys for a long time.
What the problem is not:
-It's not a beep that is coming through my speakers (since I don't have any).
-It's not a beep that's directly related to my actions at the time the beep sounds (I heard it once while I had my feet up on the desk, reading a book over lunch. I hadn't even touched the computer for long enough for the screen saver to have come on and been running).
-It's not related to my Intel wireless adapter (at least, updating to the latest driver had no effect).
-It's not related to CPU or Hard drive temperature, speedfan shows them around 23 and 40, respectively. Although, 23 seems like a surprisingly low number for the core temperatures(?)
-It doesn't seem to interrupt my activities. If I'm typing while I hear the beep, the letters show up on the screen as if nothing had happened, no pause or lockup or anything.
What it might be:
-It seems to only happen when I'm running my browser, IE7. However, I'm running that browser 90% of the time, and leaving it open even when I'm not using the computer, so it's hard to be sure.
-I think I might be seeing my hard drive activity light on the docking station flickering when I hear the beep. Maybe it's coming from the hard drive? Could it be some sort of head-movement chirping that only resembles a beep? My drive's a Samsung HM060HI.
-Could it have something to do with it's being docked? I don't think I've ever heard it beep while I'm using it at home. However, 95% of the time I'm using it at work with the dock, so I can't be sure if this is a useful fact or just statistics.
Note: I haven't tried any solutions that disable the speaker, because I feel that's like "solving" a burst appendix by gagging the person to keep them quiet. I'm trying to find out what's causing the beep. If after doing that it turns out to be benign, then maybe I'll gag my laptop.. ;)
Any suggestions what I can try to fix the problem, or to figure out what it is?
Thanks!
