Question to anyone who knows about computer viruses

[WilliamPitt]

I have a PC that runs on Windoze. Every few minutes, my speakers emit the sound of thunder, literally thunder like from a storm. Do I have a virus, or is Mr. Gates having some sport with me?

I have ZoneAlarm firewall and run virus scans all the time. Neither picks up on this. According to both programs, my computer is clean.

[wyldwolf]

1. does your search application have SFX?

My search feature has a dog that barks and scratches and will do so forever unless I shut my search window.

Took me a while to figure out where the "scratch scratch woof" was coming from.

[Xipe Totec]

2. Go to Start->Settings->ControlPanel

Double Click on Sounds and Audio Devices, and click on the sounds tab.

If you recently installed a desktop theme, it may have activated a sound scheme.

Look at the Sound Scheme drop down list box and see if a sound scheme has been selected. If so, select No Sounds, click apply, then save.

[Kathy in Cambridge]

3. It might be a Trojan (and I don't mean the condoms!)

Anti-virus softwares are reactive-they only pick up known viruses. If a virus just came out, it may take a while for them to update their definitions. In addition to running a scan, did you download the live updates from their website? You need to have a valid license.

[da_chimperor]

4. That is truly strange, don't think it's a virus

Even so, the only sure fire way to get rid of a virus is to restart your computer in safe mode, disconnect it from the internet, and then run a full anti-virus scan. You may want to do that just in case. Good luck figuring it out.

[Kathy in Cambridge]

6. he should download any updates as well

new viruses come out on a daily basis. I work in security software-that sound he's talking about may be a trojan.

[da_chimperor]

9. Updates are always a must for a PC. A trojan is possible

but it woulden't make sense that the creator would make one that attracts attention to itself.

[johnnie]

5. Maybe you have..

The "God Of Thunder" virus.

[htuttle]

7. I checked a couple of of virus sites

And found a virus named 'Thunder', but it was active back in March, 2000. There was no mention of it playing with your audio, either. I kind of doubt that this is it.

I'd follow the other advice above, and see if you have something set in your desktop themes that does this. Maybe some nasty spyware played with your theme settings, if nothing else.

[WilliamPitt]

8. Thanks everyone

I will do some digging.

I kinda like it, actually. If it's just a setting, I'm gonna keep it. ;)

[Xipe Totec]

13. You can confirm and keep the setting as follows:

In the sounds tab you will see a "Program Events" scroll window. If you have a sound theme active then one or more of the program events will be associated with a sound file. Any time that windows event occurs the sound file is played. If you click on an event, for example asterisk or Default Beep, it will show the name of the wave file at the bottom of the tab. Next to the file name you will see a button that plays the wave file for testing purposes. Click on each of the events and then click on the play button to see if any one of them plays the thunder sound. Chances are one of those events will be linked to a file named thunder.wav or something similar.

Enjoy!

[Cadence]

20. Unlikely it's a virus.

If you're running the free surfer pop up killer it has a sound like thunder when it kills pop ups. Most likely a setting where a sound is associated to a function. You can do a search on *.wav and find all of your sound files. Then you could play each one to see which it is if you're really interested.

[donheld]

10. Will if you're using IE stop

Download firefox, you'll be glad you did.

[daisygirl]

11. A couple of suggestions

Spybot Search & Destroy - free spyware eliminator. I'm pretty sure it's available at http://www.safer-networking.org . It might pick up on something your antivirus software missed.

My only other suggestion would probably be tedious - do a search for all .wav files on your computer and listen to them. If you can find the one that's doing it, you might be able to figure out what program it's associated with (and disable it if you want to) or whether it's part of some theme/sound scheme.

[iconoclastic cat]

12. It's possible.

Some people have created viruses that make computers act in very odd ways, including making PC's bark or insert text into documents before the document is printed.

My instincts tell me, however, that you may have changed some setting or installed something recently which is causing this sound to occur. I have two suggestions for you.
1. First, if you are running XP, check out the "events" that have occurred in the last hour.
To do this, go to Start>Control Panel>Administrative Tools>Event Viewer.
When the Event Viewer app is running, click on "Application" in the left frame. (This program is very similar to Windows Explorer, so you should be able to figure out what to do.)
Now, when you click "Application," you will see everything that every app has done since your last install, beginning with the most recent. Do any of the time stamps coincide with the sounds? If so, you should be able to tell which program is making the sounds and correct the issue by tweaking that program's settings.

If that doesn't work, try this:
2. Go to Start>Control Panel>Sounds and Audio Devices.
When the Sounds and Audio Devices window comes up, click on the "Sounds" tab on top. On this page, you will see a small window at the bottom that lists every sound and the event that triggers it. Look for that thunder sound and find out what event (or events) trigger it. If you can figure out why the sound is being triggered, you can stop it by tweaking whichever program is causing it. If it's a system error of some sort, you will have to go deeper into Windows to figure out how to stop it.

[mcscajun]

14. Doesn't have to be a virus...as others have indicated.

My PC suddenly started playing the "Drop.wav" incessantly one fine weekend. It drove me nuts (yes, I turned the speakers off) for days and days trying to drive it out.

Then I found out it was caused by some cuckoo background conflict that started after I installed PestPatrol and let it reside in the System Tray.

That notwithstanding...add Ad-Aware 6.0 SE Personal (FREE) to your arsenal -- it overlaps Spybot Search & Destroy somewhat.

Good luck with your search.

[nickgutierrez]

15. The sig picture = sacrilege

I highly doubt you will ever catch the real Dan Marino wearing one of those orange atrocities. :)

[WilliamPitt]

16. I lost a bet

:)

[Kathy in Cambridge]

17. Was that a trumad bet?

:-)

[WilliamPitt]

18. 'Twas

I'm hoping DU gets another traffic surge so they have to shut off sig lines.

Come on, Level 2!!

:)

[Kathy in Cambridge]

19. That shirt is almost as bad as a face painter

:puke: