Tuesday, April 9, 2013

PC speaker beeps with no apparent reason

I had this problem for about few months: from time to time with no warning, my PC started beeping from its speakers for no apparent reason.
Sometimes it started with several beeps, sometimes it started with a single long beep. When I restarted my computer the problem seemed to pass till the next time.
First, I suspected I had a virus. I made sure I updated my Kaspersky to the latest version and scanned for viruses with no luck.

I then went to Windows device drivers manager and stopped the speakers service - but still, the beep used to come whenever it wanted. Eventually, I came with the theory that my machine is getting too hot and therefore I get a warning beep. So I opened the case of the PC to make sure my ventilation is working properly - all seemed right.

So, I decided to download this small app named Core Temp. It can give detailed about the temperature of each core of your CPU. It uses information from the CPU itself and not sensors that measure temperature outside the CPU.

After loading the app I noticed the temperature was around 70 degrees. It seems to me a bit high, but nothing unreasonable. So I decided to wait for the next beep to come.
After few days the beep came again. I loaded the Core Temp and was amazed to see that the CPU temperature was on 95 degrees!
I quickly opened my PC case and noticed both ventilation are working properly. So I decided to give a closer look at the hit sink below the CPU ventilation. I noticed a huge amount of dust that filled the hit sink.

I started cleaning all the dust that accumulated there along the time. Then started my computer again and loaded the Core Temp. Then I noticed the temperature was around 35 degrees!
Eventually the mystery was solved: my PC was beeping like crazy, since the CPU was hitting too much and I couldn't tell there was a problem, because ventilation seemed to work properly.
So if your PC starts to beep with no apparent reason, do yourself a favor and give it attention. It might say that something is seriously wrong. Probably your CPU is over hitting and the blame might be more then a low performing ventilation: DUST.
I assume that the dust may have caused 2 major things:
  • Less effective hit dispensation.
  • Increases the drag of the ventilation and therefore cause it to rotate slower.
When my computer was not working too hard: temperature was around 70 degrees, which was not so good, but not so bad.

When my computer was working hard, CPU temperature started climbing higher and higher till  it reached around 95 degrees and the computer started beeping to warn about the hit.
The small difference of removing the excessive dust made the difference for more than 50 degrees! Worth the effort!

Monday, February 4, 2013

Change address bar back to Google on FireFox

Nowadays, when you install new software on your machine, you can never know if it comes with some other bundled packages that during installation simply change the behavior of your browser/system. During the installation process you get a small check box selected by default, usually on the bottom of the window so you do not notice that you are going to install some additional software.

Lately this thing happened to me, even tough I always pay attention to these kind of things. I even do not remember what I installed. But as a result of the installation I was not longer able to directly do search on my FireFox address bar.
Companies that usually change the address bar for you without you wanting it are:
I was able to repair this issue very easily by doing the following steps:
  1. Write on FireFox address bar: "about:config". It will take you to advanced settings of FireFox.
  2. Use the "search" text field on the top to filter: "keyword.URL".
  3. Right click on the resulted row and select: "Reset".
That's it. As simply as that.

It is also a good thing if you will try to filter the list by the strings: "ask" and "conduit" in order to reset other things they might have changed in you browser.
Please make sure that you do not do mistakes in the process.