BleepingComputer.com: Laptop beeps, just once, every hour

I suspect I am posting this in the wrong place, but I'm not sure where to put it. I have an Asus x50rl laptop running Vista. Over the past few days I have noticed the laptop beeps a quiet little beep every hour at 41minutes past the hour, every hour. It did not used to do this. I have tried to notice anything happening at that time that could cause this, but I cant see what it could be. There doesnt seem to be anything unusual running in the background.
Could anyone please help me narrow down what the beep means? Thanks.

I should also add, in case its relevant, I have run updated Avast scan as well as malwarebytes and superantispyware, all with clean results. I have also run ccleaner.

Right click on the Task Bar and select Task Manager
Once in Task Manager, select the Processes tab
Double click on the CPU column header (this'll sort stuff by CPU activity).
Wait.....

At 41 minutes past the hour you'll see a spike of activity - you'll try and capture the top several items in the Image Name column. Let us know what they are and we'll see what we can figger out.

Thank you very much. I will do that and report back with what I find.

After several failed attempts, this is the screen capture shot taken at pretty much exactly the moment it beeped. I was Googling earlier and found a suggestion to check the Event Viewer, which I tried to do, however when I searched for 'event viewer' the only result I got was an empty folder.

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/ind...st&id=10686

Not sure if it is relevant, but this just came to my mind:
Change the time not only in windows but in the bios as well and see if it changes the time of the beep.

I can't connect to the link that you posted. Still, if there was nothing there, there was nothing there - so we'll have to look elsewhere.

lowtek_otc's suggestion is a good one, try that and see if it's linked to the time.
This will let us know if it's time-dependent (xx:41) or if it's interval dependents (hourly).

Try checking your Task Scheduler for events that are scheduled to run hourly. In particular, I'd check to see if your anti-virus/anti-spyware is set to check for updates on an hourly basis.

Beyond that, check the items in your system tray (the area next to the time) and check the settings on those programs to see if it's one of them.

Thank you both for replying. Last night I did a full restore back to factory release settings, so the beep as gone and I guess we will never know what it was. I didnt do the restore just because of the beep. I've had the computer a few months now, and confess to being a bit of a tinkerer. I was new to Vista when I got it and have had a good poke around everything, sometimes setting things wrong or loading programs not right for Vista. To be honest, I was itching to have a go at starting fresh. It was a good opportunity to ditch some of the rubbish that came pre-installed too.
So, thanks again, have a great day

Glad that you solved it! Most of us have learned by tinkering - so a wipe and reinstall is something we all learn how to do early on!

Good luck and keep on tinkering!

vlmnz, on Jan 4 2009, 04:05 PM, said:

No problem, glad it is solved, but heck, keep tinkering! It is the only way to learn.

I am back, because so is the beep!
After I did the clean install, the beep was gone. It came back a couple of days later, still at 41mins past the hour. At first it was not every hour but over the following week or so it has become more frequent and is now every hour, as it was before the clean install.
I have gone into the Bios and changed the time. It still beeps at what would have been 41 mins past.
Last night and again tonight it beeped differently at 8.41pm. Instead of the usual one quiet beep it beeped numerous times for approx 20-30seconds. It was the same tone of beep but went beepbeep beepbeep beepbeep... if that makes sense.
I have tried watching the task manager but have never seen anything there that is not there at other times. When I am watching the task manager at 41 mins past the top 3 entries are always System Ide, Taskmgr.exe & svchost.exe.
There is nothing in the Task Scheduler.
Since doing the clean install, my Event Viewer is now working as I assume it should be (previously it was an empty folder.) There are a number of Warning and Error entries, however none have occurred at the time of the beeps (41 mins past).
I have gone through all these entries in Event Viewer but have to admit very little of this makes sense to me and is beyond my capabilities.
While I would like to try and fix this myself, I accept I may have to admit to my limited knowledge and take it to a shop.
I welcome any advise. Thanks.

Further information:

I have gone through every program and checked the update settings. Nothing seems to be set to update hourly or at that set time.
The only programs I have in the system tray are Avast (set to check for updates every 240 minutes), Comodo Firewall (which checks for updates every 24 hours and on start up).
Other than those two, there are just the icons for Safely Remove Hardware, Wireless Console icon, Battery icon, Network Connection, Speaker and Clock.
The only programs set to load at start up are Avast, Comodo and the laptops Synaptics driver.

Since it went away for a bit I would assume it is a software issue.
Any software installed around the time the beep started again?

Have you attempted to contact Asus?