How do I stop strange "Windows" sound?

zbook said:

The problem that you described was not fixed by a clean install. Sometimes the term is used generally for many things. But if you deleted partitions, formatted the drive, made it an unallocated drive and then installed a fresh operating system you did a clean install. There should not be any unusual windows noise after a clean install.

When doing a clean install, I deleted the partitions, but did not format and unallocate the drive. I'll try doing that first before testing Ubuntu.

Regarding your other question, my computer is a custom build (I filled out the specs here).

I did another clean install of Windows 10, reformatting and un-allocating the SSD. After booting up, I installed all the updates, restarted multiple times and then used the computer for a couple hours without issue. I've been slowly installing programs and waiting a few hours each time to see if the sound would come back.

Today, I was able to replicate what I believe originally caused the issue. I tried accessing one of the folders on my hard drive and it gave me the "You don't currently have permission to view this" message. I clicked continue and after I was given access to the folder, maybe 5 minutes later, the sound came back.

I then followed this tutorial and changed the "owner" of the folder to my user. Currently waiting to hear if the sound comes back.

Any thoughts why the sound might be playing due to a permission issue?