Laptop makes a clapping? sound every so often

I looked through a few threads here on this forum that have a similar title but most of what I read isn't helping me. So I started a new thread.

My laptop makes a clapping sound every now and then. It is definitely not a hardware problem, it's coming from the speakers. I can mute it, increase/decrease volume etc.

It isn't a regular interval at which it happens. Sometimes the sounds are as closely spaced as 5 or so seconds, sometimes half an hour but mostly they happen every 2-3 minutes. There is no visual cue as to which software is causing this sound to come.

I tried looking through the processes that are running but that doesn't seem to be helping too since everything seems quite legit. This problem has started happening only since the past couple of days and is extremely frustrating when I am trying to work.

Can someone here help me as to how I should go about figuring which software is causing these sounds to come?

Thanks in advance for any help.

 

Oh I actually did that already.

However I couldn't see anything in there that looked suspicious or new. I was trying to figure out the the process by finding out the process whose CPU usage increases as soon as the sound is heard. I had my doubts if this would really help.. and true to my doubts, most CPU usages were following a pattern that seemed unrelated to the sound.

I am wondering if Windows Vista does the clapping sound for some reason?

Or if there is a script that shows which process is using the audio facilities of the computer at any moment?

 

Hi Tim,

I don't think it is a malware - though I guess I should indeed check my laptop for malware, in case something turns up. I've been running Avast for sometime and have no had no real issues with viruses etc so far.

The reason is this: the same issue happened to me 2-3 years back and I did actually find out what the source of the sound was: by luck. I somehow don't remember what it was though. As far as I can remember - it was something simple - no major investigation was undertaken.

At the moment, I've succeeded in getting rid of the sound by turning off the windows sounds (except the starting music). I'll probably post here again if I find out what action causes it.

Thanks to both of you for trying to help out.