"Motor-Boating" sound coming out of a Gateway Legacy Free PC???

[TangleWeb]

You all raise excelent points! Of course it's not the hardware, replacing this system by replacing the case, mob, etc. wouldn't cost much. It's the labor of a complete software "re-build". Clean install of the OS & all apps would be the time consuming part. I could xfer the hard drive, CD-ROM, floppy & memory. I would need a case, mobo, processor (I could use the Celeron 700 MHz processor, but that wouldn't be much of an upgrade), modem, sound & video, Processor & more memory. (Vid & sound could be integrated) Any way you look at it, it's a major operation & costly. I just want to fix the friggin USB port!

[Kenteth420]

I run into this all the time, there are probably bent pins from the usb port grounding out the motherboard, if you bend or break them off that should get rid of the sound, and I've never heard of it killing off the other ports before.

[Mr T]

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Trebuchet MS, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Trebuchet MS, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Originally posted by TangleWeb:
<strong>>> "Freddy" This PC doesn't have ANY cards! It has integrated modem, sound, video & 5 USB ports. I'll check the BIOS setup for a speaker setting.

.</strong></font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Trebuchet MS, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">The speaker is for the built in modem, i had a Dell Dimension with a usr winmodem with the same problem, it made a lot of noise all the time, try disabling the modem in the bios, it may help.

[Mr T]

I would like to add a few things to my last note:

You wrote that the sound gets worse when you move the mouse, that makes me even more sure that it is your internal modem speaker making it.

The reason for your keyboard not working until windows has loaded is that your bios problably has usb keyb suppport disabled, kinda hard to change though, since you can´t get in to bois... some of these legacy free junk machines has a windows prog. for changing bios settings.

[Archer]

Just a though as your considering replacing the board one last option for the pot,would`nt resetting the bios jumper or reflashing the bios reenable the keyboard at boot up?
Then possibly disabling the onboard USB to remove the noise problem and install a PCI USB card with an internal connection for the front USB.
But the quick and dirty of disbling the speaker already mentioned is probably the favorite and cheapest solution.

[drslot]

Speaker? They either work or they don't. It's a bad capacitor on the motherboard. Scrap the Gateway and install a REAL motherboard.

[orange]

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Trebuchet MS, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Trebuchet MS, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Originally posted by drslot:
<strong>Speaker? They either work or they don't. It's a bad capacitor on the motherboard.</strong></font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Trebuchet MS, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">That was not the issue here, as you would know if you read TangleWebs original posting.

[Stanley_Kubrick]

i had one of these chumpy legacy-free machines from the Cow in here a while back... The USB ports had failed, thus the pc was useless,and we couldn't install a PCI USB card for her b/c the bracket for a normal PCI card was too tall for the Cow's case!!!!

It was so sad since she was just out of warranty, (like a month) and they wouldn't customer service this issue, at all; AND---she still had 2 years of PAYING ON THE DAMN THING to go...

The Cow screws another...

[clascomp]

Take out the components you can still use. (mostly drives) Drop the rest from a 7 story building and forget it!! Gateway should have never built the cheap POS anyway!! I've already retired several of this model in this or simular ways. Its a great way to relieve stress!!

Is it any wonder Gateway lost a lot of their market share!?!

[Falanx]

How heavily congested are your IRQs?
Does 'System' in Control Panel (or Device Manager) list a problem with those USB ports - such as insufficient resources left, would it cause a forced hardware scenario to get them all working?
I ask because, as bizarre as it sounds, that 'stuck key' sound I once came across on a system so loaded with IRQs it didn't want to deal with, and DMA errors left right, and centre. As far fetched as it sounds, the only way to shut that heap up was to take EVERYTHING out of the board and systematically reintall everything making sure one peripheral didn't interfere with another.
You say that there are no add-in cards, but onboard bits require resources too, and the likelyhood of them conflicting is not small.