This is driving me crazy--experts please help!!

Ok, about every 30 minutes to an hour, some unknown piece of hardware keeps dismounting and mounting. how do I know? it's that sound you get when you plug in a usb key or a usb ext hard drive and the windows "duhding" sound is played. Except I'm not plugging/unplugging anything and this repeats itself every 30 minutes to an hour. I tried to check the event viewer to see if its some kind of error or warning, but no luck. Is there anyway i can track down which mischevious hardware is doing this? Please help.

Thanks!

 

XP or Vista?

 

Not a very insightful question. Are you doing anything while this sound happens? Does an icon shows up that an external hardware is being loaded and ready to use? Do you have Outlook running in the background and checking your e-mail every 30 minutes?

 

When you hear the sound like when something is plugged in, can you right click the icon in the lower right to stop or eject the hardware? Typically, you can get a list of removable hardware by clicking there. Flash drives, memory cards and USB devices are examples of things that may show up there.

Is it possible that your internal bluetooth or wireless is becoming physically disconnected?

 

It might be a power saving feature or a mouse cord that's too worn. Have the device manager up and check.

 

Or the easiest method is use the process of elimination, and just unplug everything that you have connected, then plug each one in at a time to see if it causes it after 30 minutes or so.

 

I had this problem in the past, it was my usb mouse that was the culprit.

 

Good idea panteedropper. If it's a wireless mouse you use, make sure the batteries still have enough charge. I haven't run into that problem yet with mine, but I'm thinking it may have something to do with it.

 

i sometimes get that noise like 30 mintues after i shut off a printer sometimes... even tho it was a half hour ago. And that noise is made for more reasons than just uplugging a device. I hear it at random times as well, but its usually a few minutes after i was using a certain program (vista64)

 

vista
operating system

 

only thing attached is my mouse. power options already set to "never" turn off hard disk. I tried to be a bit cunning and have the device manager open so when the next 30 minutes/1 hour comes when it makes that sound I can tell which hardware is dismoutning and mounting (instantly) but this hardware is smarter... it did that sound thing again and while it did it, the device manager "refreshed/rescanned" on its own... so I have confirmed its some hardware that's acting like its being unplugged and plugged again. gosh this is really getting on my nerves.... haha I think if I don't fix this I'll have to use my computer without sound

 

I also checked safely remove hardware and there is nothing listed.

 

hmm is this only for wireless usb mouse or even wired? because i use a wired optical mouse... maybe that's the problem?

 

Do you hear the device sound when restoring mains power to the laptop after running on batteries for more than 20mins?

Try checking device power management settings (device manager) and ensure the option to allow the computer to turn off this device is not selected, most obivous devices would be network adapters.

 

woodwarp..don't think that's the problem because I've been running off of my AC adapter the whole time... is there any application out there that can monitor hardware attach/detach changes? If I can at least log which POS hardware is doing this, then I can at least try to get rid of it or fix it.