Anyone know how to troubleshoot this? Sound card problem?

[Superman]

When I use my laptop, I often listen to music with my headphones. I often get an extremely loud and annoying BLIP if I do certain things like change the volume using the Master Volume slider (but not the wave slider or any other volume slider), and I've noticed I get it at other times, like if I save my files using certain software. The noise is always the same volume (which is very loud and practically blows out my eardrums).

As far as I know, my sound card driver is up to date. Any ideas on how to solve this? The rest of the audio seems to have no problems.

[Sputnik]

This sounds like a software setting that can be changed.

In windows XP you can change your sound preferences very easily. START > Settings > Control Panel > Sounds and Audio Devices > "Sounds" tab up top. Your configuration would likely be the "Windows Default"

Under the program events window, you can actually figure out which one of those sounds is the one that keeps annoying you. My guess? The one under windows called "Default Beep" which is a wav file called "Windows XP Ding.wav" under the Windows\Media directory. You can rename the file so it won't play at all, edit it with a WAV editor, change the default beep sound to "(NONE)" or my fave- disable all windows alert sounds.

In the MAC OSX system preferences (click the apple up on your menu bar, go to system preferences) Click "Sounds" under HARDWARE. From there you can preview all the system alert sounds and lower their volume etc.

Hard to tell based off the little info you provided- but try one of those things (depending on which OS you are using), see if it helps. Either way sounds like a settings thing rather than a hardware conflict.

[Netko]

In Vista, you can click on the volume icon in the tray and then on the mixer link which will give you access to the per-application volume mixer - simply lower the volume of Windows Sounds to the preferred level.

[Superman]

This sounds like a software setting that can be changed.

In windows XP you can change your sound preferences very easily. START > Settings > Control Panel > Sounds and Audio Devices > "Sounds" tab up top. Your configuration would likely be the "Windows Default"

Under the program events window, you can actually figure out which one of those sounds is the one that keeps annoying you. My guess? The one under windows called "Default Beep" which is a wav file called "Windows XP Ding.wav" under the Windows\Media directory. You can rename the file so it won't play at all, edit it with a WAV editor, change the default beep sound to "(NONE)" or my fave- disable all windows alert sounds.

In the MAC OSX system preferences (click the apple up on your menu bar, go to system preferences) Click "Sounds" under HARDWARE. From there you can preview all the system alert sounds and lower their volume etc.

Not it, but thanks for trying. The sound doesn't seem to be any windows sound. To me it sounds more like some error BLIP... almost like something you'd hear if you mashed too many keys on the keyboard at once. Adjusting the volume doesn't have an effect on it either.

[Joviwan]

have you checked your laptop's BIOS? There's frequently a 'system speaker' that will make noise instead of your standard speakers that you might be able to turn off through BIOS settings

[Superman]

have you checked your laptop's BIOS? There's frequently a 'system speaker' that will make noise instead of your standard speakers that you might be able to turn off through BIOS settings

Thank you!! That's it! I knew there was something I wasn't thinking about.