Clearing the halls

A teacher emailed me and said:

One of the laptops in the rolling lab is making a loud screeching noise. It’s so loud that it has caused some people to think it is the fire alarm.

That loud, huh? I’ve got to check this out. When I get to the school, I look in the computer lab where the mobile cart is supposed to be. Hmmmm, not there. I check the sign-out sheet and find the last teacher to check it out. A quick check of that teachers room yeilds nothing. I’m getting a little annoyed because I have no idea which of the 40+ rooms this cart is in.

When all the teachers arrive (I got in before they did), I have the school secretary do an announcement asking that whoever has the mobile cart needs to call the front desk. A teacher calls the front desk about 15 seconds after the announcement is made. She didn’t know she was supposed to sign the cart out. I guess she didn’t see the signs on all four sides, and the top, that states the cart can’t be removed without first signing it out. :lol:

I go to the room where the cart is and pull out the problem laptop. The system starts booting fine and even goes to the Windows XP login screen without anything odd happening. Once I login, and the start-up sound starts to play, an eardrum splitting noise starts blasting from the little laptop speakers. The teacher wasn’t kidding when she said it was loud.

After an agonizing few seconds, Windows finishes loading and I open up the volume properties. One of the kids had turned off the mute setting of the microphone (under ‘Playback’). This was causing feedback which was causing the loud noise. Muted the microphone and the noise stopped. The ringing in my ears took a few more minutes to stop.

Told the teacher what caused the problem, how it was fixed and left for some coffee.

The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good. - Ann Landers

27.Apr.05 Hardware, School Work

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2 Responses to “Clearing the halls”

  1. helpful_harry | April 28th, 2005 at 12:27 am

    That’s a neat stunt for next time I borrow an buddy’s laptop (hehe)

  2. The_d | April 30th, 2005 at 6:58 pm

    My laptop does the exact same thing. Maybe not as loud as you’re describing though.

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