Every now
and then my PC located in the bedroom emanated a sound at random intervals,
probably caused by an application playing a short media file. And I noticed it
twice when entering the bedroom which I thought was a mere coincidence. But it
wasn’t actually! Guess what’s the relevance here?
Control
Panels – Sounds was the first place where I checked. It was not the Sound
Scheme as it was already set to "No Sounds".
With
almost a dozen applications running and I didn’t want to disturb them, I fired
up the excellent Process Monitor right away,
configured the filters so that any entry with ".wav" in the Path is captured. It may not necessarily be a
.wav file, but I had a suspicion that it could be, in this case. So I included
".wav", to start with.
After
leaving it in Capture mode for about 5 minutes, Process Monitor displayed some
relevant events.
WNA1100.exe
is the Netgear configuration software that came with
my Netgear WNA1100 (Wireless-N 150 USB) Adapter. This
software seems to run the ConnectToInternet.WAV file located under the Netgear directory. It’s obvious that the WAV file is played
whenever the system / Wi-Fi adapter establishes connection to the internet.
The wireless router was located in the first floor of the
building, and the signal strength was way too low in the bedroom which is one
floor down, and several bends away from the router. The signal strength was
fluctuating very often, causing several connect/disconnect sequences within a
span of 10 minutes.
No internet access when the signal strength is
at its lowest
Access: Local and Internet when the signal strength improves.
Later on I noticed that the sound was certainly reproducible
whenever the bedroom door was opened…. that’s when the signal strength improved
by 2 points.
For now, I simply disabled the audio and pop-up alerts by right-clicking
on the Netgear icon in the Notification area, and
disabling the option "Enable Internet Connected Notification"
via the context menu. I’m now planning to relocate the Wi-Fi router to improve
coverage. Otherwise an additional Wi-Fi Router for the ground floor or a Wi-Fi
repeater would be in order.
And if you think what I did was a roundabout
way….. believe me it just took 5-7 minutes to track
down the source application that caused the sound. Is your PC playing a random
audio in the background and that has got you at your wit’s end? This guide can
help.