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Squeeling sound from my machine

Squeeling sound from my machine

Postby twhite56 » Sat Mar 27, 2004 1:48 am

Okay here's the deal, about 6 months ago, i turned on my computer and i got an extremely high pitched noise from it. It was also loud, and occured right at the end of the bios bootup. Then, i talked to dell support, who said it was a hard drive problem.

They sent me a new hard drive, i had to go through a full reformat (fun fun) and it was fine for about the last 5 months. Then about a month ago the noise reappeared. And today it happened again. This is really annoying. I have tried disabling the floppy drive, and that had no avail. I can also seem to bypass the noise if i go through the bootup menu in the bios.

Anyone got any ideas on this? It's hard to localize the noise, but we thought it was coming from the hard drive. Might be the cd drive or dvd drive, but that is kind of hard to imagine. Anyone heard of anything like this?

It's an 80gb maxtor i believe, and it's refurbished. Specs beyond that i would have to open up the machine.
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Postby OsirisX » Sat Mar 27, 2004 2:01 am

I think thats some kind of signaling method used by the bios. My mb does it at every startup and the funny thing is that I know something is wrong when I do not hear the sound. Although mine is just a regular beep not high pitched at all.
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Postby twhite56 » Sat Mar 27, 2004 2:15 am

It's not that kind of sound. It keeps going, and is extremely loud. This sound is definetely not normal. I don't know what's up with it, it will continue until you hit the power switch on the machine, and then it stops. The machine will not boot when i get the sound.
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Postby Tw34k » Sat Mar 27, 2004 2:23 am

I had a fan go out on my video card once...and before i realized it was that, my first thought was that the hard drive was going...

this may be a bit time consuming, but you can try to unplug all the molex power connectors from your devices and fans (( except for the CPU fan )) and then boot the computer...

Obviously it wont go into windows and you'll get an error since it cant find the boot device...
let it run for a bit and see if you have the noise...
then systematically plug in one device or fan and boot up until you can find which thing is causeing the annoyance..

I find that the small fans that are on the video cards or sometimes on the Mobo Northbridge chipsets go bad and cause a squeeling noise.

Good Luck with it.
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Postby twhite56 » Sat Mar 27, 2004 2:32 am

okay thanks for the suggestion. The other problem is that the noise, as i said is very sparatic. Sometime is won't happen for a couple of weeks, then i get it.
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Postby bimmernut » Sat Mar 27, 2004 2:38 am

My guess is that it's the fan on your video card (if you have one), as mentioned previously. I have two Dell's and one has the original video card which has a small fan on board. In the first year I had the video card replaced and since, I've been careful to clean out the dust (accumulating inside the case) on a regular basis. I'd start with the video card.
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Postby Tw34k » Sat Mar 27, 2004 2:41 am

well you can try this to...

when the noise is happening....open the side cover, and lighlty touch your finger to the very center of the fans...one at a time...(( Do Not Stop The Fan )) ...just a gentle touch to stop any vibrating type squeal..

OH Yah....dont touch the blades...thems smarts.

If it suddenly gets quiet when you touch a fan, it's most likely the culprit.
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Postby dlt » Sat Mar 27, 2004 3:01 am

Well you've already been through replacing the hard drive once. If you feel it's the same thing I'd back everything up, and I know when mine was dying I was advised to leave the pc on all the time. Did you try to do any of the drive diagnostics?
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Postby ~Robrowe~ » Mon Mar 29, 2004 7:48 pm

If you have no media in your optical drive then it is not very likely. A fan could be the culprit but it is hard for me to determine without actualy hearing the sound. If your vid card was overheating to the point of not booting it would not post either and you would never see the bios to do anything. Sounds to me to most likely be the hard drive again. I would download MBM5 here and monitor you power supply voltages. especially your +12VDC if they are out by more than 5% this could very well cause premature hardware failure. Dell and other mass producers of computers are not known for their selection of quality parts to put in their machines. tier1 suppliers to dell get the bid by submitting the lowest price which, unfortunately, seldom means the best components. When it comes to computer hardware I am a firm believer in "you get what you pay for". I nave had more people bring me dell and gateway machines to look at than all of the rest combined. And their manufacturing techniques usually prohibit you from installing 3rd party components in their machines such as power supplies and even a different case.
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Postby kewefella » Sat Apr 03, 2004 9:23 am

I have heard a sound like this before and in one instance it was coming from a graphics card fan,...check for vibrations or when you shut off the pc see how long the fan takes to spin down if its quick then its a possibility. Also I have heard power supplies do it, not sure what in the power supply. One way to find out is if you can get hold of either part to "try out" you may be able to isolate something
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