Computer Plays Random Classical Music — A Feature, not a Bug! — I suppose if you scrounge around the Microsoft Support Pages long enough stuff like this will crop up. Weird!
SUMMARY
During normal operation or in Safe mode, your computer may play “Fur Elise” or “It’s a Small, Small World” seemingly at random. This is an indication sent to the PC speaker from the computer’s BIOS that the CPU fan is failing or has failed, or that the power supply voltages have drifted out of tolerance. This is a design feature of a detection circuit and system BIOSes developed by Award/Unicore from 1997 on.
MORE INFORMATION
Although these symptoms may appear to be virus-like, they are the result of an electronic hardware monitoring component of the motherboard and BIOS. You may want to have your computer checked or serviced.
Found by Ben Slutsky
I had a 486 fan that played Fur Elise if the chip got too hot. At start up it would play the first two notes when first turned on and cold.
I kicked it down to a friend who called me asking why his computer was playing music, even though he turned the speakers off. He needed to blow the dust out of the fan and he was good.
“Für Elise” I can understand, but “It’s a Small World” is just cruel and unusual punishment.
Once, after a brief power failure, my computer restarted and a woman’s voice was repeating “NO CPU INSTALLED” over and over and over. It booted up into Windows and worked normally (obviously the CPU was installed) but the voice wouldn’t shut up, even after rebooting it. After some Googling I learned that the way to stop it was to unplug the monitor then reboot.
The next generation of motherboards will have the Banana Phone song. You’ll see…
Seems to me, although it was before my time, I read a bit besides Levy’s Hackers talking about memory registers mapped to speaker oscillation levels or something, back in the days of hulking giants.
Occurs that a semi-accurate reproduction of the first performance of “Daisy” would be a pretty wicked ringtone. Fortunately, having worked for a wireless outfit as an ss7 engineer, I’m unlikely to own another cell phone until they become a requirement of citizenship and are implanted as an integrated surveillance suite with the RFID chip. Something about knowing what the vendors actually put in those things that just totally puts you off ever wanting one yourself.
#5
Spill the beans Max Bell, what are the vendors putting in those things that just totally puts you off ever wanting one yourself?
Hmmm, I guess Beethoven won’t sue M$ for copyright, but how about “It’s a small world”? Who owns that copyright and did M$ pay to use it?
#7 This a warning from BIOS on the motherboard, so it’s the motherboard manufacturers that could be sued, not M$.
#5 – c’mon, what do vendors put in those phones? Max, ya can’t leave us hanging like that….