Microsoft’s chief software developer, Raymond Chen, shared a story on the company’s blog during the days of the Windows XP operating system.
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According to Chen, an unnamed “major computer manufacturer” found that some laptops crashed while playing Janet Jackson’s “Rhythm Nation” music video. The malfunction was observed not only on laptops playing the clip, but also on laptops working nearby. Then, similar problems started to appear on laptops from other manufacturers.
It was not disclosed which computer company it was.
As a result, it turned out that the song contains a sound that resonates with a particular model of hard disk. During playback of the clip, sound waves from the laptop speakers caused the hard drive at 5400 rpm to vibrate, causing the laptop to malfunction. Eventually, the manufacturer came up with a simple solution to the problem and added a filter to force laptops not to reproduce this frequency.
It has not been disclosed which laptops and hard drives the story told affects. Experiments revealed that hard drives could be crashed with the help of a scream or a special program that reproduces sound at a certain frequency.
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