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What should I do: my hard drive is making a clunking sound?

Posted By : of Data Doctors on August 22, 1999

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In the past week or so have noticed some knocking sounds as windows comes up from a cold start or reboot. Am getting errors when I try to play sounds from control panel. Error reads "windows cannot play the sound, your sound card may be in use". Also getting errors from media player, states "MMSystem320 all wave devices that can play files in this format are in use. Try again when a wave device is free". (Nothing else being used at the time). I tried "reseating" the sound card to no avail. I tried a new sound card and there were no drivers, so I tried to download from company and could not open program. I returned it and got a different sound card. The one I currently have is the Creative Ensoniq audio PCI. The card is in, the computer has recognized new hardware, loaded the drivers and I still get the knocking noises when windows opens up. There is no sound from windows. I spent an hour on phone with technician who could not assist, finally said he thought the problem was in Windows. I have CD player that does work, but no other sound. HELP! I am completely frustrated. Thank you so very much for your help.

This question was answered on August 22, 1999. Much of the information contained herein may have changed since posting.


Some hard drives do "clunk" on startup, but if a hard drive suddenly starts clunking, we would treat it as if it was dying, which it may be Hard drives do not last as long as people think We would suggest starting to back up your system right away and frequently Also contact the web site of the manufacturer of your hard drive as sometimes they may have hard drive recalls that you may be entitled to

You may experience one or more of the following symptoms when Microsoft NetMeeting is running on your computer and the audio features of NetMeeting are enabled:

Sounds that are assigned to events in Windows 95 may not play when the corresponding event occurs

If you double-click Sounds in Control Panel, and then attempt to manually play a sound associated with an event, the following error message may be displayed:

Windows cannot play the sound <file> Your sound card may be in use.

If you attempt to play a .wav audio file in Sound Recorder, the following error message may be displayed:

Another application is playing audio You can either interrupt the application or wait until it is done Then try using Sound Recorder again.

You cannot play .wav audio files in Windows 95 when NetMeeting is running on your computer and the audio features of NetMeeting are enabled

To work around this issue, disable the audio features of NetMeeting To do so, click both check boxes on the Audio toolbar of NetMeeting to clear them If the Audio toolbar is not visible, you can reveal it by clicking Toolbar on the View menu

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Posted by of Data Doctors on August 22, 1999

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