BIOS playing "fur Elize" (is it a virus?)

Recommended by Wim's BIOS...

by **MichaelKersten** » Tue May 07, 2002 9:17 pm

A few weeks ago my Computer started playing the "fur Elize" sound from the built-in speaker every 10 minutes for 2 minutes long.
I've tried eveyting, including removal of the harddisk and booting from (a clean) floppy with DOS. The problem remains.
I suspect it has something to do with my BIOS. Is it a BIOS virus or some stupid build-in functionalty from DFI?

My BIOS-ID: i430TX-2A59ID4BC-00

HELP!

Michael Kersten.

by **soupy** » Tue May 07, 2002 9:22 pm

Your CPU fan is probably dying.

by **MichaelKersten** » Thu May 09, 2002 11:07 pm

Thank you, Canadian Soupy,

It was my CPU-fan, a cable-end was blocking it, so there was no cooling of my CPU.

Thanx a lot!

by **KachiWachi** » Fri May 10, 2002 2:31 pm

This is really funny...did they really build this feature into the motherboard??? And...is it printed in an instruction manual someplace?

What other motherboards do something like this? Maybe we should take a poll just for fun...

by **NickS** » Mon May 20, 2002 10:18 am

Taken from Microsoft's support Knowledge Base
Computer Randomly Plays Classical Music (Q261186)

"During normal operation or in Safe mode, your computer may play "Fur Elise" or "It's a Small, Small World" seemingly at random. This is an indication sent to the PC speaker from the computer's BIOS that the CPU fan is failing or has failed, or that the power supply voltages have drifted out of tolerance. This is a design feature of a detection circuit and system BIOSes developed by Award/Unicore from 1997 on.

"Although these symptoms may appear to be virus-like, they are the result of an electronic hardware monitoring component of the motherboard and BIOS. You may want to have your computer checked or serviced. "

From
http://www.uktsupport.co.uk/humour/humidx.htm
which also points out such Microsoft Knowledgebase gems as:

"Hair Color of the "Person" Icon for a User Group Becomes Gray If the Group Contains More Than 500 Users (Q281923)

by **Rainbow** » Mon May 20, 2002 7:16 pm

I think that it's only on DFI boards.

by **Hardware Junkie** » Mon May 20, 2002 11:36 pm

Computer programmers have a weird sense of humour