Optimus II approaching two years of age is making alarming sounds

[PlainSnailing]

Roughly a month ago I powered-on my laptop and all was fine, except after five minutes it began to make some noises I had never heard before. The sound was like a saw cutting through wood, if that makes any sense, and it sounded like the sawing motion was getting faster and faster until the sound was an outright roar. I quickly forced a shutdown and gave it a few moments, but upon starting-up, it did it again. This time when I shutdown it actually corrupted a portion of my hardrive, losing me a lot of my media files. They were cloud-saved elsewhere, but still I am pretty concerned now.

Since then it has either behaved itself or randomly started the sawing sound. The laptop doesn't physically rumble and there aren't any sounds to suggest that the internal components are necessarily grinding into each other, but my knowledge of computer parts is still not where I'd like it to be, and I'm clueless.

My laptop will be approaching its second full year of service in april and I will be the first to admit it has allready been through a lot in its time, which might be one of the reasons its acting-up.

I won't fool myself into thinking its okay though. I've allready sent it back for repairs once about seven months ago, and when I was around a friend's place for a LAN gathering, their dog - who was meant to been locked-out of the living room with all the sensitive equipment - sat on screen and chewed at it pretty badly, even cutting a couple of wires. The core of the laptop itself was apparently undamaged, and for the past four months I have been using a spare monitor, but I fear the damage might have had some delayed impact which I didn't detect at the time. My wireless adapter also had its sudden last hurrah last wednesday, and I had to get a USB replacement.

I don't have the money to return it anymore. The house flooded over the holidays and I've been laid off work until March, so I'm broke and acually in debt to the banks. At this point, I will need to consider making the most out of the laptop until it decides its had enough, but I need to know if these sounds are something I can ignore, or need to be addressed in some way.

Thanks for reading, and any help you may be able to offer.

 

[SmokeDarKnight]

If its a sound that gets faster over use i would have supspected that its a FAN, perhaps there is something stuck in there or it just needs a clean out. I would, if your comfortable doing it yourself, remove the bottom panel of the laptop and inspect the fans. Look for any debree or dust build up and just try to remove it, i usually use tooth picks and earbuds to get to the hard to reach places. If you can identify a faulty fan it may not be turning when its underload then it may need to be replaced in which PCS can perhaps supply you with a new one.

They come off quite easly with 4 screws and a small plug into the mother board.

Sorry if this is not well written im at work and have to type fast before someone seem me

Hope this helps

 

[vanthus]

The noise could be caused by a faulty hard drive,they can make all kinds of weird sounds,clicking ,scraping, screeching or grinding for example.

 

[ubuysa]

Does the noise sound to be mechanical or electronic? By that I mean does it sound like a fan rubbing on something for example, or a disk grinding? Or is it a sound emitted by the speakers or some other part of the laptop?

If it's a mechanical sound - and your description makes it sound like it is - can you isolate where on the laptop it's coming from? Have you cleaned the fan and insides lately? If not perhaps you should. Check that nothing is interfering with the fan blades.

Also try running it with the covers off, that may help you locate the source of the noise. If it's the hard disk (and it could be) it would be wise to back everything up NOW and see about getting a new hard disk. I realise you have no spare cash but a if the drive is going bad it won't get better on it's own.

Edit: Beaten to the post!

 

[SmokeDarKnight]

Edit: Beaten to the post!

Your descriptions always sound better than mine though

 

[PlainSnailing]

Does the noise sound to be mechanical or electronic? By that I mean does it sound like a fan rubbing on something for example, or a disk grinding? Or is it a sound emitted by the speakers or some other part of the laptop?

If it's a mechanical sound - and your description makes it sound like it is - can you isolate where on the laptop it's coming from? Have you cleaned the fan and insides lately? If not perhaps you should. Check that nothing is interfering with the fan blades.

Also try running it with the covers off, that may help you locate the source of the noise. If it's the hard disk (and it could be) it would be wise to back everything up NOW and see about getting a new hard disk. I realise you have no spare cash but a if the drive is going bad it won't get better on it's own.

Edit: Beaten to the post!

I am around 80% confident that the sound is not being caused by the fan. I had some early trouble with the fan when it first arrived, as there was a loose washer getting spun around by the blades which I had to remove. As a result, I know the sound the fan produces even under duress.

My first suspicion was that it was the hard drive disc. I didn't want to believe it as that was the last piece of bad news I wanted to hear apart from the motherboard itself just flipping the metaphoric table. I would have selected a SSD at the time, but we're still at the stage where SSD storage capacity is inferior and expensive, so I didn't risk it.

Sometimes propping the laptop at certain angles seems to make it settle down again, but I reckon it'll only be a few more weeks at most before it packs in. It really is an alarming sound; at full spin it sounds like a diamond drill.

 

[ubuysa]

Download the free version of HDTune from http://www.hdtune.com/download.html and install it. HDTune will allow you to view the SMART data stored by your hard disk and that should tell you whether the disk itself is reporting any problems. Google SMART data if you need help deciding what the values mean. HDTune can also run a benchmark test that will reveal any problems with your disk, I think it can also run a surface scan that checks the disk for errors (that does not harm your data).