Mystery 30 second event on XPS 8930

@ThomasIvan Process Monitor may be a useful tool to determine what is causing the sound you are getting. You can download Process Monitor here. After installing Process Monitor you can setup a Filter to display processes or events matching the following condition - a Path that contains .wav (or the full name of your Close Program wave file). Add the filter and hit Apply and OK. The processes will be displayed that meet the filter criteria. You can right-click each process/event and select Properties; the Process and Stack tabs in the Event Properties windows may help you determine what caused the event. Hopefully from the displayed processes, you can maybe determine what is causing the sound. This article may help: https://www.winhelponline.com/blog/find-application-making-sounds-in-background/

Vic384 at al, I have run Process Monitor and captured the process making use of the Utopia Critical Stop 'close program' wav file.
The process 'Taskhostw' appears in the Process Monitor capture every 30 seconds and carries out five actions on that wav file - create, query standard, read, query basic and close. I can see that process with the corresponding PID bobbing up in CPU usage in 'details' in Task Manager.

Beyond that the event properties, process and stack entries tell me nothing about the original action which kicked off that action.

I'm tempted to just end the task but
Still checking

I've seen claims the Killer Control Center software (for Ethernet E2400 on the XPS 8930, and Killer WiFi, if you have the optional Killer WiFi card) may cause these beeps.

Open services.msc, double-click and change Startup type for all Killer entries to disabled. (Don't change anything else in services.msc.) And then reboot.

See if that helps... If not, you can always re-enable automatic startup for the Killer services in services.msc, assuming you want/need them.

EDIT: Not to worry, disabling Killer in services.msc won't affect your internet connections. I don't have them running on my XPS 8930 and have no issues...

@ThomasIvan Based on this description of taskhostw.exe it is possible that the process taskhostw is not the problem but that taskhostw is executing a DLL that contains executable code that is the problem. The question then would be what executable code in a DLL is being executed every 30 seconds and what application does that DLL belong to?

I see when I select 'process tree' in Process monitor that the Taskhostw comes under a svchost.exe with a command ending in 'Schedule' and which in Task Manager under the relevant PID is named 'Schedule' with description 'Task Scheduler'. Not sure what that tells me yet, surely nothing is scheduled every 30 seconds or does the Sceduler check every 30 seconds and if so why create a sound.

I'll disable the Killer services ready for my next reboot anyway as RoHe suggests as it sounds harmless.

Tom

The sound persists after BIOS update to 1.1.15 and strangely if I change my 'close program' sound to something other than Utopia Critical Stop the 30m second sound changes accordingly but if I set 'Close Program' to No Sound the 30 second sound reverts to Utopia Critical Stop ( but Process Monitor doesn't spot that one ).

A Service Request was raised, I guess by Dell Cares, but I can't get to see it as my e-mail addr is rejected against Service Tag and Service Code.

I'll add Dell's Remediation Service to the disabled services but that will be along term negative test as the Mouse freeze is very infrequent.

Tom

It is strange that if you set 'Close Program' to 'No Sound' it would revert to 'Utopia Critical Stop'. Does it actually revert in the Sound Program Events settings or do you just hear the 'Utopia Critical Stop' sound? Previously you stated that "It does not sound if I set the sounds theme to 'no sounds' ", but I guess that is different than just changing the 'Close Program' event to 'No Sound'.

Vic384
it doesn't revert in the Sounds Program Events, that stays as 'no sound' but the sound is heard. Also Process Monitor still filtering on 'Utopia Critical Stop' doesn't trap the process - boggling eh ? Process monitor only catches the process when the 'close program' sound is set to Utopia Critical Stop and I guess that wav file is accessed.

I have yet to detect which Task Scheduler task is started.

The PC has been restarted three times by the BIOS update but not with the afore-mentioned services disabled. I can find the PID and am getting near to simply ending the task and praying but I'll wait till after the Monday reboot as opposed to my usual sleep/wake and possibly after the Killer wi-fi update offered by Dell.

Except that the sound is always that currently associated with 'close program' even if I change the 'close program' sound to something else like 'balloon' to be distinctive.

Thanks for your continued interest.

Tom

EDIT: Yes the event might be something other than a program being closed but that it has hit upon my 'close program' sound and won't let go.

Have you ever tried repairing Win 10?

1. Back up personal files on external media to be safe.
2. Open CMD prompt window, Run as administrator
3. At the prompt, type in: DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /Restorehealth and press Enter. Copy errors, if any. Be sure to include one space before each /.
4. Back at the prompt, type in: sfc /scannow and press Enter. Copy errors, if any.
5. Close CMD window and reboot...

I am going to do a reboot (rather than sleep/wake) Monday AM with the Killer and Dell Support Assist Remediation services disabled. Dell Cares has provide some audio and graphics driver updates to apply and after that I may need to try the more drastic surgery you advise.
Thanks again
Tom

  "I also have the sporadic brief mouse freeze symptom but that's another story."

That is an issue with Support Assist Remediation. After I downloaded a new version of Support Assist the issue is resolved.

@ThomasIvan 

Any guesses ?

Removing the Dell SupportAssist Remediation Service solved the micro freeze issue as was previously suggested here:  https://www.dell.com/community/XPS-Desktops/XPS-8930-freezes-for-3-5-seconds/m-p/7502259/highlight/true#M46495

GK

On Sunday evening I disabled all Killer services and the Dell Support Assist Remediation service following advice from the Community and shut down the PC.
On Monday 3rd Aug I rebooted ready to install the drivers Dell Cares provided. The 30 second process and sound have gone ! There are occasional close program sounds at irregular intervals, sometime of several minutes which I guess are normal background processes. I have rebooted before to no effect, that's without any disabled processes.

Any guesses ?