laptop making a strange whirry noise...?

[joko]

Hi,

after about 2-3 hours on my laptop it starts making a sort of slow deep whirry noise that sounds like "mwaowm, mwaouwm, mwaowm" over and over and sort of goes up and down in tone. (and actually sounds a bit demonic!)

it seems to be coming from the area at the front, where the touch pad mouse is and slightly to the right.

it stops when i turn the machine off anf on, but starts again later.

any ideas what this could be?

many thanks

[kempie]

Which model laptop do you have? Looking at the specs may be able to pinpoint the culprit.

Prime suspects for whirring noises must be either a fan or harddisk.

[joko]

its a dell latitude C810

the fans are at the back and don't appear to be the reason

what do you think?

[kempie]

A quick peak at the service manual shows that the location you indicated is directly over the optical drive.

http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/latd810/en/index.htm#online_documentation

Do you have a CD/DVD in the drive?

Or you could power down your laptop, remove the optical drive then run your laptop without it to see if the noise returns.

Dell also have a handy Support Wizard that may point you in the right direction.

http://support.dell.com/support/topics/global.aspx/support/dsn/en/support_wizard?c=us&cs=555&journalid={1}&l=en&s=biz&treeid={0}

[joko]

hi

i looked at that but mine is a C not D, but i checked out the site and the nearest thing i can see to where the noise appears to be coming from is the hard drive and the battery

there is also the 2 telephone sockets too

i am having no problems with it at the moment (touch wood) so which would you think is the problem?

i've never come across this before. it now hasn't made the noise for about 5 hours...?

thanks

[Catso]

It is almost certainly the DVD/CD drive. I had an AST laptop that did it. It sounded just like a distant police siren!

It's speeding up/slowing down as its reading (or trying to) the disk.

Pull out the tray when it happens and see if that stops it.

[stubbings]

Sounds like the start of your hard disk dying. I had similar symptoms on both my son's laptop and my work desktop. The system eventually started to 'freeze up' after increasingly short periods.

BACK UP ANYTHING YOU NEED TO KEEP TO CDROM OR REMOVABLE DRIVE as you will lose it if (when !) the disk finally gives up. A new hard disk will be the only cure, but at least you have got a warning of trouble and the opportunity to save your files !! Some just die and all is lost.

Fitting a new HD is pretty simple, but after swapping it, you will need your original system CD's to reinstall Windows and you will have to reinstall all your other software.

Look on the bright side - you have an opportunity to save your stuff.

[stubbings]

Just another thought.

After backing up your stuff, try running scandisk (right click on the C drive icon in My Computer; chose Properties; Tools; Check for Errors.

This might disable any bad bits of the disk and if you then Defragment from the same Tools menu, you might get a bit more life from the HD. But anyway...

DO BACK UP YOUR DOCUMENTS !