Question for computer nerds

Nutball

TreeHouser
Joined
Apr 4, 2015
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Mt. Juliet, TN
I have sensitive hearing, so I can often hear most any modern non transformer (switching) power supplies and stuff like that. I have known my desktop computer to make some unusual sounds like a quiet screeching that isn't normal except during specific operations. Most of you probably never notice these noises, many might not be capable of hearing them, IDK. I think highlighting stuff causes it as best as I can remember. At least I know that highlighting causes interference to radios operating near 150MHz.

Recently I heard the sound when I tried to view a large video from a camera. I saw that it would take longer than I wanted to wait to load because it wanted to temporarily download the video to the computer before playing rather than doing both at the same time. I clicked cancel around the time that only 1% was loaded, that started the screech. Since it was taking longer to cancel than to load 1% of video, I look at task manager to see what's going on. The processor is idle. I didn't check the disk usage. I assumed it was 0 at the time because I didn't hear clicking, but just now I'm wondering if the screech really is disk noise. The only other possibility is some subprocessor separate from the main core.

My question is: what is screeching and why?
 
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  • #3
I'm thinking maybe a hard drive noise, but I haven't heard it in a while.

New question: Why do certain seemingly useless processes startup when I either never use them, or if I end them they start up a minute later?

2 have my attention: AppleMobileDeviceService.exe I don't trust anything Apple running in the background or period. Also wmpnetwk.exe (windows media player network sharing service)

Usually I can end those processes, but they start up again, and sometimes it says access is denied when I try to end them. They usually sit idle, but use memory, and might access the internet.
 
With all that stuff, you need to look it up online, and YMMV finding good $proprietary_software documentation. Here's a site that shows wmpnetwk.exe...


Instructions seem reasonable, but I wouldn't worry about the registry. Not sure disabling it will get you much. A handful of megabytes is hardly worth the effort. As far as spying goes... That's what you signed up for with proprietary systems. MS and Apple can be trusted more than the average crapware people download and install, but it would be better with gnu/linux. If you see services popping up, and you research and disable them, keep notes of what you do. Sometimes disabling things can have unexpected results, and it's good to have dated notes to go back to for reverting changes.
 
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  • #5
Thanks. I didn't check Apple's recovery settings, but WMP was set to keep restarting it. It's so nice to know the manual controls for things.
 
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