Surface Laptop - constant random dinging sound

[Isaac]

I have a Microsoft Surface laptop. About a week ago, it started randomly dinging - this hollow ding. Sometimes it doesn't ding for 60-120 seconds. Sometimes it dings twice in 10 seconds. It's very hard to make out any pattern of any kind! It's the same whether I'm totally idle or not. I've restarted my laptop several times.

I've narrowed down the sound by playing around with windows Sounds settings - it's the same ding as the Speech Disambiguation wav.

This is a corporate laptop with, unfortunately, any number of dozens of processes running in the background that I can't predict or control, but does anyone have any idea what this might be or has encountered this before?

Before I stump someone from offshore Desktop Support by opening a ticket I figured I'd ask around as well.

 

[Galaxiom]

I have a Microsoft Surface laptop.

AKA Microsoft Suffers.

 

[Isaac]

AKA Microsoft Suffers.

you mean Surface's are notorious for issues like this?

it's the latest and greatest idea my corporation has for 'bringing us all together' - This, and unassigned cubicles.

 

[Galaxiom]

We have some of a very early model at my workplace. Almost everyone who has one wanted to change to a normal laptop. For us they were notorious for failing to start up. It is easily overcome by resetting (press and hold the Volume Up and Power on) but the users hated them.

The small screen and the keyboard were also not liked. Maybe later models were improved?

Ironically the Network Admin and I are probably now the only staff who still use them but it is usually with a docking station supporting an external monitor, keyboard and mouse. I only use it at home but the Network Admin has his as his desktop machine We are upgrading soon but the other staff have been the priority.

 

[AccessBlaster]

Could it be a faulty USB port letting you know it's had enough

 

[Isaac]

We have some of a very early model at my workplace. Almost everyone who has one wanted to change to a normal laptop. For us they were notorious for failing to start up. It is easily overcome by resetting (press and hold the Volume Up and Power on) but the users hated them.

The small screen and the keyboard were also not liked. Maybe later models were improved?

Ironically the Network Admin and I are probably now the only staff who still use them but it is usually with a docking station supporting an external monitor, keyboard and mouse. I only use it at home but the Network Admin has his as his desktop machine We are upgrading soon but the other staff have been the priority.

Yeah I never use it by itself, I'm all about leaving it closed w/a full size monitor, etc. But this dinging is driving me batty.

Could it be a faulty USB port letting you know it had enough

Actually that might be brilliant!!!--Because I do have a USB switch-hub, which I frequently (daily or more often) switch from the Surface to another laptop. I also have a USB-C cord which sucks, you have to wiggle it over and over to get the signal to come from the Surface to the monitor.
This is helpful. I'll hone in on those two things and see what I can do. Thx

 

[Isaac]

Could it be a faulty USB port letting you know it's had enough

i think you are right. my awful corporate Surface laptop came with NO ports on it that can be ran to a monitor other than usb-c. (it does have regular usb ports, but i mean like........dvi=no, displayport=no, hdmi=no). I hate laptops that are so cool and modern and sleek that they are stingy with media ports. So stupid.

Anyway i've been having trouble with the USBC-to-dvi cable that I bought to use with it.......you have to wiggle the usbc connection all the time to get it to work.
So I unplugged the usbc cable and the dinging stopped. I guess I'll try replacing the cable.........hopefully it's the cable not the port, else Desktop Support is getting a surface shipped their way for replacement.