Laptop makes random loud beep

[Dave]

My laptop makes a random loud beeping noise. The noise is a single, short,
loud beep - I would estimate 0.1 secs in length.

Shortly before it happens, it becomes unresponsive for about 1-2 seconds. It
happens very intermittently... typically once in every 5 hours of use.

I have a Dell Inspiron 6400.

Any ideas what this is?

 

[Joel]

My laptop makes a random loud beeping noise. The noise is a single, short,
loud beep - I would estimate 0.1 secs in length.

Shortly before it happens, it becomes unresponsive for about 1-2 seconds. It
happens very intermittently... typically once in every 5 hours of use.

I have a Dell Inspiron 6400.

Any ideas what this is?

I know it's not the sound of joy! some manual may have the list of those
computer-signed-language <g> that you may need to look up to translate to
the error type.

And from the way you describe I am guessing it's HEAT related
problem,either the whole system or the CPU gets too hot. But I may be
wrong.

 

[kony]

My laptop makes a random loud beeping noise. The noise is a single, short,
loud beep - I would estimate 0.1 secs in length.

Shortly before it happens, it becomes unresponsive for about 1-2 seconds. It
happens very intermittently... typically once in every 5 hours of use.

I have a Dell Inspiron 6400.

Any ideas what this is?

Probably your operating system is set to beep on errors. If
that's it, obviously the next step is determining what the
error was, possibly isolated what you were doing at the time
or what subsystem was being stressed. You might seek newly
created logs (for whatever is applicable or scan the drive
for creation or modification dates) or check Event Viewer on
Win2k / XP.

 

[JRoppert]

Had the beep problem on a dell inspiron 9300. Look here what i found:

http://jroppert.blogspot.com/2006/10/random-beeps-while-google-desktop-is.html