Cricket noise coming from laptop

Hi everyone

I bought a laptop last year and it was working perfectly up until two or three months ago when it started making a strange "cricket" noise. At first it wasn't very loud and it was only occasional, but now it's there all the time. I called the company who made it and they told me to take the laptop and they would see what the problem was.

They had it for about two weeks and replaced the DVD burner, which, they said, wasn't working. (It was working perfectly alright when I took it to them, so I don't know what they must have done to it). Well, the thing is they said now the computer was fine, but it is NOT. The noise is still there and it's driving me insane! I can even hear over the music I'm playing.

I have no idea what it is, so I thought maybe someone here could help me. I've read some threads on other forums and they mentioned the hard drive and the battery and other things, but the tech guys say there's nothing wrong with the laptop. (Then what's that noise?!)

I think the noise is coming from the upper left side of the laptop, near the power jack (is that what it's called? Sorry for the English, by the way). Well, anyway, I'm getting a can of gas duster as soon as I can to see if maybe it is the fan as some people in the other forums say. But if it isn't, what do you guys think it could be? After all, the tech guys cleaned it and checked it out and said there was nothing wrong.

Well, thank you for reading and any help is appreciated

Sounds like you probably have a fan going bad, as their bearings wearing they tend to squeek.

Sounds like a fan to me. The chirping could be the motor is getting clogged up. Look for some kind of program that shows your temps that would be the best way to nail it down if you have a motor going bad.

reply to post by Casandra


Sounds like your hard disk is faulty,

the sounds is usually caused a spinning issue, or the reading arm slapping on disk.
could also be a fan issue i suppose it's hard to understand what the sound is without hearing it.

i'd take it to an IT techy person, there is a fix that sometimes work (if its a hard disk).. if your not confident with the machine i wouldnt do it thought,

Take a sanwich bag nd put your Disk in it, wrap it up tight and put it in the freezer over night, leave in out the freezer for 24 hours and then give it a go, like i said i wouldnt be doing this if your overly confident and i cant 100% gaurentee its the problem as i cant hear the sound,

I have same thing. About month ago my laptop started to make strange noise from left side of the machine. It's not broken or anything.. It just keep weird sound like "zzeep"

Thanks for the responses!

I did tell them when I took it to the company that I suspected it might be the hard drive, and they said they would try to save the data if it that ended up being the cause of the noise. But they told me (when I picked it up) that the drive was fine and that the DVD burner had been the problem. They ran some programs to see the temperature and all that but they found nothing but a "faulty" burner.

It wasn't, so the noise is still there, and if it's not the drive...

Or maybe it is and these guys just didn't know what was wrong with the computer and just changed the burner to pretend they had done something useful

Originally posted by PiKE1987
I have same thing. About month ago my laptop started to make strange noise from left side of the machine. It's not broken or anything.. It just keep weird sound like "zzeep"

Now that I think of it.. it does sound like "zzeep"

It's driving me nuts!

I would have to say its one of your internal fans, weather its the Chipset fan or CPU fan, If S.M.A.R.T. Software didn't show or record any errors or fluctuations with the HDD Health, My conclusion would be a squeaky fan. I just replaced a CPU fan on a New Sony Vaio for a guy last month and it was less than a year old.

reply to post by Casandra


Do you have a warranty on it ?

It may be time to replace.

reply to post by skepticconwatcher


Yes, I do. That's why they didn't charge me anything when I took it to be fixed. They said if they couldn't fix the problem they would give me a new laptop but ended up replacing something that wasn't broken and giving the laptop back to me.

reply to post by Casandra


first guess would be the fan needs to be cleaned or replaced.

it's your hard drive.

nothing else would make 'that' noise.

probably an IDE one, western digital for extra loud points


back up and replace

Originally posted by Beavers
it's your hard drive.

nothing else would make 'that' noise.

probably an IDE one, western digital for extra loud points

back up and replace

Although it is always a good idea to have a good back up schedule, I would have to say the above quoted person is probably incorrect about the problem being the hard drive.

If a hard drive makes any kind of noise for a long period of time, it would of been fried by now and there is no evidence of this in the OP's original post.

Originally posted by Beavers
it's your hard drive.

nothing else would make 'that' noise.

probably an IDE one, western digital for extra loud points

back up and replace

I did back up everything in the drive, that's how I know there was nothing wrong with the DVD burner.

I'm calling the company again tomorrow and telling them the problem wasn't solved. I'm just kind of sad about having to say goodbye to my laptop for two weeks again

yeah, you're doing the right thing.

old drives start to make an annoying cricket noise, which sounds nothing like a broken fan.

my commadore amiga used to make this same noise 100 years ago

reply to post by mileysubet


what else makes that indisputable cricket noise in a pc then?

Originally posted by Beavers

old drives start to make an annoying cricket noise, which sounds nothing like a broken fan.

It's kind of sad that nowadays a drive is considered old when you only bought it the year before

Thinking about it there is only 3 moving parts on a laptop. The dvd drive, the hdd and the cpu fan. You may want to simply take out the dvd and the hard drive and let the computer power up for a while. If it still squeaks its the cpu fan. Also if the squeak seems to be from the speakers then look for a program that could be causing the noise. Weatherbug might cause a squeak.

Just some thoughts.

If a hard drive is singing, it's usually due to bearing failure as well and usually only occurs in considerably older machines...primarily due to heat.

IS There is a remote possibility that the sound is coming out of the speakers ? At consistent timed intervals ?

If so then there is the possibility that this is software related.

Try turning down your speakers, leave the system for a moment and see if anything changes....

Years ago there was a weather program called weatherbug that used the sound of crickets to indicate that a weather update had recently occurred.

Not that you'd necessarily have this software installed on a newer computer but the sound could be attached to any application such as a screen saver, malware or something of that nature running in the background.

....even some of the power save bloatware that comes with most laptops for example when the laptop powers down devices to save energy while in sleep mode....

If you turn down your speakers and it still occurs then this isn't the case but if you no longer hear the sound then it very well might be software related or even malware related.

Another quick way to determine if it is Application/software related is to reboot your system in safe mode which only loads the operating system and nothing else and see if anything changes...

Sorry without hearing the sound it's difficult to diagnose...but the fact that the techs didn't solve it from a hardware perspective makes me suspect something non hardware related as in software.

Buena Suerte

reply to post by nh_ee


Thanks for the detailed answer

I did hear about the weatherbug thing, I turned down the speakers but I can still hear the sound. I tried the Safe Mode option, checked to see if there was a virus or malware or anything but it wasn't that either.

If the guys didn't find anything wrong then what's the problem?

Is there a possibility that there's nothing actually wrong with the laptop and that the noise is normal? We have several other laptops at my house, but none of them is from the same company, maybe it's normal for the brand?

I don't think I'll have time today to take it back to the tech support, maybe next week, but if they keep insisting that there's nothing wrong with it then I'll just suck it up and stop complaining. But they couldn't have had it for 2 weeks and NOT hear it, it's there, you can't possibly miss it! But maybe the office was too loud or something.

I guess I just have to wait and take it back to them when I have some free time.

Thank you, everyone, for your help. I really appreciate it