High pitched whine when adding an audio track

[RichCat6]

I don't know if I'm doing something wrong or what, but whenever I either drag and drop an audio file into the track space or add an audio track, it produces a loud high pitched whine, and I have to turn my computer off to fix it. I have all dependencies installed, so I know that's not the problem.

System specs if needed: Dell Latitude D630 Intel Core 2 Duo 2GB RAM

[rncbc]

check the following:

1. in alsamixer, whether your (internal?) mic input level is set too high ;
2. in qtractor mixer, whether you really need "Master In" audio gain (slider) set to 0db; you may keep it lowered down if you're not really into recording this time; or simply disconnect its inputs;
3. in qtractor main menu, whether Track > Auto Monitor is on; turn if off, if the previous options down't fit your bill ;). hth.