[SOLVED] [[^C[[^B[[^C[[^B[[^C[[^B[[^C[[^B at boot up ??

aaa choo · 11-03-2014, 08:16 AM

Hi All,

I am running Debian Wheezy on a 13 year old Pentium IV. I use it as my daily desktop, great! Now, a few months ago, it started making these strange droid noises, a bit like R2D2 and the normal boot up screens are flooded with [[^C[[^B characters. The system boots up fine though and the noises stop. I'm just wondering what could be causing this? Maybe something faulty on motherboard?

Best,
JT

rokytnji · 11-03-2014, 08:20 AM

Probably Hard drive noises. Those IDE drives have moving parts that wear out over time.

Edit. Unless you are running off of a live cd. Then the CD drive reading cds makes R2D2
type of noises.

aaa choo · 11-03-2014, 08:22 AM

ok, so maybe the hard drive has trouble reading boot sector? It makes the same noises (lasts about 15 seconds) at the start of every boot, even after I reboot it hot after a few hours of running. Also, can the HD insert those funny [[^C[[^B characters onto the screen?

rokytnji · 11-03-2014, 08:24 AM

I'd not worry about it myself.
But I have backups.

aaa choo · 11-03-2014, 08:25 AM

I think whatever is making the noises is causing the sound to come out of the PC speaker because it is very tinny sound. I don't use a live CD no.

GazL · 11-03-2014, 09:44 AM

^[[B is the escape sequence generated by the cursor down key.
^[[C is the escape sequence generated by the cursor right key.

Something seems to be generating key presses during your early boot. Maybe the keys are stuck down, or there's some sort of hardware issue related to your keyboard, or I suppose the keyboard circuitry on your MB.

The sound might be the key-repeat 'beep' (but that's just a guess).

aaa choo · 11-03-2014, 11:05 AM

Hi GazL,

Thanks for that interesting input. I will have a look at those keys and have a look at keyboard connector. I will report back with findings.

Thanks very much!
aaa choo

aaa choo · 11-03-2014, 04:00 PM

ok, I fixed the problem, it was GazL who pointed me to it. I have one of those old Gateway 2000 Anykey keyboards which are over 20 years old and I found that the diagonal right-down key on the dedicated cursor pad wasn't working. So I physically removed this key from the keyboard and now everything boots with no beeping noises or [[C^[[B^ symbols. Everything is back to normal. Thanks again GazL!