Computer Help.

first some info on the computer

it runs on windows and has absolutely no anti virus protection.

i don't really care who sees what i post or what sites i go to since none of them are illegal and can be googled.

and credit card info, it's not my job to secure it. so i'm not liable and it's not my money. they have fraud divisions for that.

the problem is, on start up it runs fine, but after a while it starts making these loud overdrive noises.

it's sounds like it's making 300 million calculations per second and is about to implode with all the info it is downloading and uploading.

i'm talking nsa supercomputer loud noises like you see in the movies.

any guesses on what's causing it, or is it just getting hacked to pieces by so many intrusions that it can't keep up.

any remedies would help.

reply to post by randomname


It's either three things.

Hard Drive;
DVD/CD ROM Tray;
Fans going into overdrive;

Does it heat up and shut off, or just make the noises?

I would suggest opening your case, buying a can of compressed air and cleaning out the bits and parts that are covered with dust.

Your fans are probably well coated with a great layer of dust, causing your system to heat up and then your fans go into overdrive.

Otherwise your DVD ROM or your hard drive is getting reading to poop the bed.

~Tenth

Well if you have no shields raised and you cruise around popular sites, legal - illegal make no difference, except legal sites have more adware/spyware to deal with.

One of the greatest little free programs that cleans out your system well is called "Superantispyware", all one word, google it, and download it for free. It's very small and does n amazing job and clearing out all that "millions of calculations" noises going on from all that adware/malware installed on your system just from visiting websites with ads. It even cleans out Trojans.

I also have no anti-virus protection, but I use Windows XP service pack 2, I don't upgrade from there. Never have problems, never catch viruses (like I did with sp3 and greater).

old hard drive clicking

My first thought was the DVD Drive spinning up as well.

If there is a disc in your drive, remove it and see if it continues to happen.

reply to post by GobbledokTChipeater


I'd hope a 3 year ATS member knows the difference between a disk in the drive and their hard drive making those crackling noises. Over time the hard drives do heat up and get louder, mine has been making loud grinding noises for about 3 years now, 9 year old drive, still works fine though. I give it a little tap now & then when it gets really loud and it seems to work. The "calculations" sounds are usually with older hard drives, or a lot of adware/malware/spyware transmitting to their sources.

Originally posted by JibbyJedi
reply to post by GobbledokTChipeater

 

I'd hope a 3 year ATS member knows the difference between a disk in the drive and their hard drive making those crackling noises. Over time the hard drives do heat up and get louder, mine has been making loud grinding noises for about 3 years now, 9 year old drive, still works fine though. I give it a little tap now & then when it gets really loud and it seems to work. The "calculations" sounds are usually with older hard drives, or a lot of adware/malware/spyware transmitting to their sources.

edit on 16-4-2012 by JibbyJedi because: (no reason given)

Hahaha classic, troubleshooting 101 - if it doubt, give it a clout!

THe funny thing is, my near 10 year old 80gb drive (plopped it back in a while ago to dualboot windows/ubuntu) and it's still licking with no smart failures while the tb drive I got about 2 years ago is already giving me crap.

Old tech, even with the new tech, beats new new tech.

Noisy fans would be my guess, if it were the hard drive I'd expect the mouse cursor to lag, the system to lag, etc and it would be definitely noticable. a 320gb drive I've had in another pc has decided to break, and it takes down near the entire PC when it's struggling to access the drive.

Now my gpu fan, luckily I can use Trixx tweak utility to adjust the fan speed. In the mornings, it sounds like someone putting bricks into a wood chipper. Gotta tweak it up to 100% and let it wear itself out, OR open the case, and apply troubleshooting 101 again.

If it's the hard drive on the way out, making that sort of noise, then I'd be kissing any relevant data on that machine buhbyes!! blame it on the helpdesk guy when he comes out to look at it... smile and say thinks as he leaves, but then call his manager and say he was fiddling in the hard drive, you know that box under the monitor, and now you've lost your H: drive and can't access your Personal share, which has the business units tender for the new hospitality lab, and get him sacked.

Originally posted by JibbyJedi
I'd hope a 3 year ATS member knows the difference between a disk in the drive and their hard drive making those crackling noises.

The OP didn't mention anything about 'crackling' noises Nor does the length of somebody ATS membership qualify them as a professional computer sound identifier.

Originally posted by JibbyJedi
The "calculations" sounds are usually with older hard drives, or a lot of adware/malware/spyware transmitting to their sources.

Adware/Malware/Spyware does not make a noise when it "transmits to it's source".

reply to post by randomname


Try this:

Remove all devices from your PCI slots
Run Ccleaner or something else to fix your registery and format the empty space on your disk and defrag the entire HDD. Also remove cookies etc
Run chkdsk /r and you should see some improvement.

Peace

Originally posted by GobbledokTChipeater

Originally posted by JibbyJedi
I'd hope a 3 year ATS member knows the difference between a disk in the drive and their hard drive making those crackling noises.

The OP didn't mention anything about 'crackling' noises

Nor does the length of somebody ATS membership qualify them as a professional computer sound identifier.

Originally posted by JibbyJedi
The "calculations" sounds are usually with older hard drives, or a lot of adware/malware/spyware transmitting to their sources.

Adware/Malware/Spyware does not make a noise when it "transmits to it's source".

edit on 17/4/12 by GobbledokTChipeater because: (no reason given)

It takes an "expert" to know the difference between the HD and the DVD drive?

Crackling, calculations, to some it's all the same. And have you ever listened to a HD with 60+ adware/malware transmitting when your browser was closed and the cpu was just sitting there doing nothing? Then listened to it after removing all of that? There is a difference. Like the difference between an old 486 connecting to AOL and a Pentium with 4gig RAM. Night and day difference sometimes.

thanks for your help, will try them out.

reply to post by randomname


Well although I love troubleshooting, you really didn’t give much technical info…(ie: is your computer a Windows XP from the 90’s? Is it a laptop?)

Sounds like you have one or more of these issues...

1. You have a computer that is more than 7 years old (pre dual-core processor)
2. You have way too many programs being loaded at start-up
3. You have massive amounts of malware and viruses....

#3 If you don’t have Virus Protection, I’d presume this is one of the main issues and probably should be done first. Although there are a huge assortment of Virus Protection programs that can be found on WWW.CNET.COM, I have found Microsoft Security Essentials to be the most consistent at fixing/catching them.

Note: More effective scans can be done through "safemode"

#2 Almost every program feels it should be pre-loaded during start-up, which basically just eats up your system resources. There are a couple ways to stop them from loading… I usually go through the disk cleaning program IOBIT - Advance System Care because it allows you to disable or delete (disabling it first is safer) and you can clean the misc $#!+ in your computer with the same program…

#1 About all you can do with older computers (with limited knowledge of their workings) is add more RAM and run a "cleaner" to speed up processing... I've found that if you have 1 gig of RAM or less.... it’s real easy to unknowingly bog down your older computer.

Note: you can find out how much RAM you have by: Go to Start button (lower-left corner) > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > System Information
RAM is also referred to as Physical Memory
If this computer was purchased within the last 4-5 years RAM isn’t as much of the culprit

If you have any questions, just ask

From the sounds of just reading your thread...
It sounds as if it could be a hard drive issue. Usually these loud sounds are a precursor to it dying/going bad.

If you have important files .. I advise that you back them up and quickly...It could only be a matter of time before it quits working. ALL of us should get into the habit of backing up....It's a shame to lose your pictures, and everything on your drive you hold dear.....This most likely to happen if you do not back these files up to a secondary drive, or USB .

Good luck op!

That sounds a lot like an old HDD. When I got the one I am using, a Seagate Barracuda 7200 rpm 250Gb Sata, it had Windows 7 on it with a real nasty virus of some kind, and was really noisy when running. I replaced it like the customer wanted, then ran Sea Tools on it to see if it was still any good. Sea Tolls reported that SMART had not been triggered, so I used Sea Tools to write zeros to the drive, then used CopyWipe to do the same think on a random, reversed algorithm. Loaded PCLinuxOS on it, and been using it ever since, about a year now. Runs nice and quiet now.

It's not always the hardware


Open your Task Manager and click on the Processes tab. Make sure "Show Processes by All Users" is checked and sort the list by CPU. If you see something NOT called "System Idle Time" taking up a good % of your CPU, it's most likely some service that's cranking away.

Anybody that runs the SETI@HOME client knows what I'm talkin about.

Good luck