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Crunching sound like walking on thin snow covered with ice

2K views 12 replies 3 participants last post by  Joseph King 
#1 ·
Windows 7 Pro 64-bit. Runs Norton Endpoint (the enterprise version of their virus protection). It's a business machine and I'm pretty careful about how I use it.

Last night I was at the office doing nothing special on the computer when it made a sound I'd never heard it do before and I cannot for the life of me explain. It was exactly like the crunching sound that would be made from walking on a thin layer of a few inches of snow covered with a very thin layer of ice. Slow, consistent, crunching sounds.

It stopped when I muted the volume and returned when I unmuted, so it wasn't some kind of radio waves.

I would have assumed it was the Apple OS telling me I had put a few files into the trash, except it was louder, more prolonged, and gradually degraded into what became more of a general static sound -- and, oh yeah, I don't have an Apple computer!

This was truly something I had never heard before.

It disappeared upon reboot.

Any idea what that could have been?

What do you guess the odds are it's an indication of a virus? Or of anything else I should be worried about?

(The main question is whether, out of an abundance of prudence, I should restore the OS drive from an image that's about a month old. Data is on a separate drive and a lot hasn't been updated since, so it wouldn't be that much work and I wouldn't lose anything, but it sure is considerable time I can barely spare if I can avoid it.)

Thanks!
 
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#3 ·
Thanks. The few other techs I got opinions from so far said they'd ignore it unless it happens again and that if it does recur it's probably a sound driver, and not to worry about it or restore the OS drive.

It would be some work to restore it, but not prohibitive (and does always introduce the tiny chance of losing everything with a faulty restore, of course, though I have older images of the drive if needed).

But it really matters to me the keep the system clean and stable. I have enormous work and responsibility ahead of me with business growth moving forward and really do need it to be a solid system.

Can I please ask what your thinking is in suggesting a restore of the OS drive?

I'm kind of with you, honestly. That was a very distinct sound of someone walking on crunching snow, and to my ears it sounded far too "realistic" and too much like the sound produced by an actual "human-created audio file" than something weird being randomly produced by a faulty sound driver or some odd hiccup or glitch or random static electrical charged in the system somewhere. And then after about six or eight slow "steps" it gradually dissipated into what became a random static noise and then went away.

It was kind of the sound a hacker might produce to freak you out and let you know they were "crunching up" files and the security of your system was deteriorating.
 
#4 ·
I was thinking, how about bringing it up to one of the guys in tech support in your office? Or your supervisor, whoever would be responsible for software security. I am not a tech expert myself, but have been in a similar situation (was advised by our tech support to restore the drive due to a virus). Assuming you are not self-employed, the company would probably prefer that you valued IT security over a few lost days of work. Even if they don't recommend that you restore the OS drive, at least you have informed them about your concerns if it actually does show up to be a hacker or something!
 
#5 ·
Thank you, my friend. The fact is that I'm very much self-employed. It's all me, for better and for worse. I have an investor/advisor/friend who is a very senior tech engineer in Silicon Valley who told me he would not be at all concerned about it being any more than a possible sound driver issue if it ever even comes up again, and a senior person on another forum similar to this one said the same thing.

Yet, I agree with you and have been around long enough to know that, one, it "might possibly" be malware and, two, the time lost to restoring from backup to get rid of it is infinitely less costly than the inevitable consequences of letting a virus remain and grow -- even if it just means restoring from that same backup later down the road.
 
#8 ·
This may not be your issue, but when you mentioned the noise disappearing when you turned down your speaker, it reminded me of a problem I had years ago involving a 'grounding loop'.
I was never able to fix it properly.

This discussion might be of some value if only to compare your problem:
https://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=1163183
 
#10 ·
In my case, turning down the speakers at the speaker or in Windows with the slider, had the same effect.
The static subsided till I turned the sound back up.
Problem was eventually solved when the motherboard failed. :cool:
 
#12 ·
Hi Joe.

The noise was there till the MB failed which was about 9 months from the start of the noise.
One day, all of a sudden, my system became unstable. I/O errors.
Put in a known good hd with a drive image known to be good and the problems happened again immediately. Voltages were good. Capacitors weren't leaking. Swapped out the vid card to no effect.
It was an old, even at the time, socket 7 motherboard in a used computer I bought at an estate auction. I used it about 3 years. My investment was little so was an excuse to upgrade to a newer machine. Data was still good on the original hd and I even reused it in another computer till I needed a bigger drive.
The noise was similar to the sound of 'snow' on an old TV set to a channel that wasn't available, like before the days of cable TV.

Oddly, this only happened when the computer was under a light load or idling. If I ran something like Prime 95 for stress testing, the noise went away.
I'd read there were many places where a ground loop could occur, even outside the computer in a building's wiring. I had a buddy electrician check out household current, but he said there were no issues.
This problem never occurred in any other computer or TV set, so I've attributed it to something in that computer. A problem I couldn't solve.

Just one of those unusual random events you don't seem to hear about often.
Thus the advice you seem to already be following, back up all your data to an external drive.
My past problem may not be yours, but better safe than sorry :)

John :)
 
#13 ·
Hi John,

Well, you had quite an ordeal there. Glad it had a good outcome at least, and without losing any data.

I always do periodic or at least occasional backups of everything. The question was whether this already rose to the level of justifying a restore from backup, and so far I'm not to the point of doing a restore. Too busy thus far. The fact that it happened only once has the few techs I've asked about this saying it was probably just a fluke.

Just like that electrical issue you had, sometimes electrical buildup can happen in a computer, too, but just for the moment. Likewise, well, could have been something with just software acting up just for the moment, which also happens. So, I'm totally gambling here, but if it doesn't happen again I'll probably not bother with a restore -- but will keep doing backups.

Thanks for your efforts to help me.
 
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