Unwanted Announcements: A Peculiar PC Quirk
If you’ve ever been immersed in work only to be interrupted by your computer announcing, “Did you know?” every 30 minutes, you can empathize with my recent experience. As an IT professional, I pride myself on troubleshooting tech issues, but this one left me scratching my head in confusion.
Running Windows 10 version 20H2, I began to notice that my laptop had developed a habit of vocalizing random factoids at half-hour intervals. Whether it was sharing trivia about hairballs—apparently known as “bezoars”—or recounting historical tidbits about Marie Antoinette, these uninvited interruptions disrupted my workflow.
Despite having turned off Cortana and ensuring no unnecessary programs were installed or running, the persistent—almost mocking—voice continued to speak up like clockwork, precisely at 10:30, 11:00, and every half hour thereafter.
In an effort to quell the barrage of unsolicited information, I scoured forums with search terms like “Did you know PC Speech” and “my PC keeps telling me factoids,” but found nothing pertinent or useful. Given my background, I was genuinely embarrassed to face such a perplexing situation.
However, after some sleuthing, I uncovered the truth. It turned out that a prank had been played on me by a coworker who had run a batch (.bat) file programmed to read from an XML file. He had cleverly set a PowerShell script to schedule this comedic assault every 15 minutes, leading to my bewildering experience. Talk about being the butt of an office joke!
While I appreciate a good prank, I must admit that this one tested my patience. If you ever find yourself in a similar situation, take a moment to check for any scheduled tasks or scripts that may be wreaking havoc on your tranquility. And maybe, just maybe, keep an eye out for your prankster colleagues!
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