What is playing that bell sound?

My computer is making a bell sound with some frequency now. I can't tell what program is causing it. Nothing seems to be happening or going wrong particularly. If I was hearing a bell alert sound as a result of Windows XP I'd expect to see an annoying popup balloon. It seems much like the ding.wav file. It's sort of random, not often enough to make you stop everything until you find the source or else turn off your computer or speaker.

I have been looking at the event viewer lately and I may have a bad block on my hard drive, but I'm not aware that any alert system would make a noise without pestering you to death with popup balloons. There doesn't seem to be any connection between the timing of the bad block messages (which may not really indicate a bad block but might have some other far more obscure cause) and the bell sound.

I do have a bunch of browser windows open, and I have Opera, Firefox, and Flock open.

Hmm, I guess I could try closing all the sessions on the browsers and starting out fresh.

My question is: Is there a way to tell what program caused a sound to occur?

Suezanne, I know this isn't a great solution, but if I had that problem I would probably try to track down the source using Rohitab Batra API Monitor.

http://www.rohitab.com/apimonitor/index.html

Another thing that came to mind, but that I can't seem to find anymore, was something somewhere in the Windows control panel that provided a visual indicator when a sound was played. Maybe it was on my old laptop, and it might be available for installation from a Windows CD, but I'm not sure it gave any clue about what application played the sound.

Good luck <3

The most notorious source of "where the hell is that sound coming from?" is the Windows Find agent (that little dog). I can't remember if his collar has a bell, but untold thousands have been taunted by that doggy waiting for orders behind layers of other windows.

Browser windows are of course suspect due to ads.

Interesting... the last couple days, I've had a problem with my USB connections (keyboard, mouse, headset & iPod). It started after I got the new iPod Touch Saturday. I get that bell sound that happens when a USB device is connected or disconnected. It goes crazy for a few seconds, and my devices flash and stop responding. After a while, they settle and work again. But, at the same time, I get a pop-up telling me that SLVOICE.EXE has crashed. I sent the error reports.

Anyway, I figured it was something with my USB hub or a short in my mouse or keyboard that get dropped on the floor way too often. But, since you report a "bell" sound, and the two-tone "USB Sound" is sorta like a ding-dong bell... I'm reporting my experience. I'm using the newest Release Candidate.

Thanks for the responses. I will try to get the API monitor, that sounds like the sort of thing I might want from time to time.

That reminds me, there used to be a company called SysInternals that made nice utilities like things that tell you what programs are connecting to where on the internet on what port and a wide variety of technical computer stuff. The company was bought by Microsoft but strangely even though they are part of MS now they still make nice stuff for free that doesn't have pasterl colors with gradients and simulated highlights on the interface.
This is at http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/default.mspx .

I believe I figured out the source of the bell sound. It is Twitter. I am using the Twitter tracking system report when it finds tweets with specific words, and if gmail is open on a tab in the background, a Twitter Gtalk window popups in (in the background where you can't see it) and makes a bell sound.

I ran chkdsk /R on the hard drive and it found some bad clusters and added some bad spots to the bad spot list. so when I check the control panel admin tools event viewer it no longer has the numerous serious errors it was displaying, which apparently did not have anything to do with the bell sound but which were of far greater import. Although I am not getting errors now, I need to get a portable hard drive and back up both my computers. This hard drive has basically all the residue of my SL involvement and other stuff so old I don't remember it all - it has the remaining data from it's two predecessors on it.

I kill that dog and that paperclip and any other cutesy crap like that the minute a computer comes under my control. That and switch to Windows Classic (Why does there have to be a fade in the title of windows classic? Why can't the title bar just be one color all the way across? Sigh. ) Then turn off all effects like shadows under menus - all the effects in the control panel Display settings. Then download Powertoys and use it to turn off as much interface bling as it will let you. I don't recall if Powertoys lets you stop the Windows Menu Animation - the stupid sluggishness that gives the illusion of motion to the menus. If it doesn't, then it's find the registry setting that lets you get rid of that.

I'm surprised you can't put "what's that beeping sound" into Google and get a list of programs that tell you what the beeping sound is coming from.

I just tried that...
It does give you some good advice!

That little mutt was scratching his paw one day, I had totally forgot I had the agent up, and it was driving me nuts trying to figure out where the scratching sound was coming from... lol!