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Twice now my computer has frozen, accompanied by a terrible, angry, buzzing/beeping noise through the speakers. It is my first build, and as such I'm not really educated enough to even make a guess as to what is causing it. It doesn't respond to any keyboard or mouse input and I end up needing to reset it. Here's what I've noticed:

  1. It has only happens when I am online
  2. It has only happens when a flash applet is running (once on chesscube.com, once on piq.codeus.net)

I know that might not mean anything, considering it's only happened twice, but I've put in like 20 hours on Steam and maybe 3 hours browsing online, so these crashes do seem connected with it. I've checked the temps and voltages after rebooting, and nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Here's my build:

  • intel i7 2600k
  • p8p67 deluxe mobo
  • gtx 570 superclocked
  • ripjaw RAM
  • 800W power supply
  • CM 690 case
  • Zahlman cpu fan
  • hard drive, disk drive etc.

All my drivers are up to date.

For some reason, I don't know why, I suspect my graphics card. Does anybody have any insight as to what might be causing this?

EDIT: also it has only happened when I've not been using head phones, as I only use my monitor speakers when not gaming. Idk if that's important, but there it is.

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  • 1
    the buzzing sound is probably from whatever audio you were listening to ATM and being repeated a billion times a second. Sep 12, 2011 at 18:21
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    What OS are you using?
    – Soren
    Sep 14, 2011 at 12:48
  • Can you try the procedure I left here and report back to us? Sep 18, 2011 at 1:05
  • That happened to my computer, installed windows vista and it worked fine. I found out that the problem is caused every time I updated windows 7. Hope this can help.
    – user187211
    Jan 11, 2013 at 14:24

9 Answers 9

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+50

If it's the regular types of pc beep patterns, you can reference the motherboard manual to tell what problem it is trying to communicate. But i suspect that is not the case.

What you describe almost certainly translates into those indecipherable buzzing sounds that suggest the state when the audio hardware is getting rubbish input signals - due to the hardware crash - and thus producing rubbish noises. This does not necessarily suggest the audio hardware to be the faulty component; it can be any combination of components, unfortunately.

In my historical case, it was simply a bad combo of processor + motherboard. Not video card, not audio card, not RAM. I was only able to finally diagnose this with a second computer to swap parts individually. Using the processor on another motherboard, and the motherboard with another processor, worked perfectly stable.

You'd have to slowly troubleshoot a component at a time.

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This problem will occur if the the RAM or harddisk is not connected properly.

If you can, I suggest you to open the computer and re-insert the RAM and connect the cables to Hard disk properly.

For assistance you can check videos in youtube.com. Once they are connect every thing will work fine. Also when you remove the RAM from the slots, there should be a lot of dust, so first clean it up and then re-insert!

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Which OS? If windows, try upgrading/downgrading your graphics card drivers. Also check that the grpahic card and the sound card aren't sharing an IRQ.

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You should also update your version of Flash Player. If you have the latest, try downgrading to a slightly older version.

I helped a friend a few months ago who had his desktop connected via HDMI to his TV. He could play intense games all day, watch blu-rays, or anything else graphics intensive, but once he started using flash video or games, the system would hang and the speakers would emanate a horrible buzzing sound.

After lots of troubleshooting, we found out his GPU was able to be exchanged under a 3 year manufacturer warranty. Swapped out cards and the issue went away.

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Perform a Windows Update and have it search for all software. Here's a HTG link that describes this:

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/23434/beginner-geek-make-windows-7-update-find-updates-for-more-than-just-the-os/

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    Welcome to Super User! It would be nice to include the essential parts of the answer here, and provide the link only for future reference.
    – slhck
    Sep 18, 2011 at 19:50
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Personally, I would take a different approach, and assume that it's deliberate. A lot of motherboards have alarms for different failure types.

Check to see what alerts it creates.

Given the propensity for flash to overwork a system, I would assume you're overheating it. I know you checked the temps are reboot, but temps come down very very fast.

See what diagnostics your motherboard has.

Also, you can run something like Prime95 to stress it and see if you can reproduce it.

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A few of my clients have experienced this type of symptom over the years, and it always turned out to be the speaker connectors (either not plugged in all the way, or there was some sticky dirt on the connector), although this didn't cause the computer to freeze.

Try using a different set of speakers with a different set of wires. The fact that your headphones don't exhibit this behaviour sort of points to the speakers.

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    Ok, that might explain the ugly buzzing, but unless I gravely misunderstand how computers work I don't think faulty speaker wires would cause a full system freeze, which is the main problem. When I'm not using headphones, I'm just using the integrated speakers on my display, which is connected to my graphics card through an HDMI cable. Hence my suspicion about it being my gpu....anyway, thanks for the response! Feb 14, 2011 at 15:59
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    I had a suspicion that you were using HDMI
    – Dustin G.
    Sep 14, 2011 at 19:30
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As Randolf and Dustin commented below... The problem sounds like a HDMI/interface issue, see if you can repeat it using DVI and some external speakers - i'm guesing not (which would indicate a GPU problem... You also mention its clocked - suggest running it at factory settings...)

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Double Check your drivers, yes, they may be "up to date" but are they the right version for your OS and/or hardware? First thing's first, start ruling out software, wipe the disk, reinstall the OS, and very systematically and methodically start doing research on which driver's you're using, where you're getting it from, what order, and which version. After that, start with some memory testing tools.

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