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My PC constantly makes loud noises while operating - a sort of whirring, creaking, grunting sound, rather like a noisy fax machine. This has been getting steadily worse - can anyone suggest what the problem might be?
First thought...bad fan. If you feel comfortable opening the case, do that. Watch and listen to the machine while it's in operation, do NOT touch anything other than the exterior of the case, and see if you can determine where the clunking sound is coming from.
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Only so many actual moving parts in a PC - fans & drives.
Cooling fans can make noise and still function ok, although the noise could be an indication of failure down the road - easily replaced.
Power supply has its own fan, which can also fail.
If the noise is from the HDD, could very well be cause for concern, because they tend to go downhill.
Loose chassis or mounting screws can vibrate - worth checking out - if an internal screw falls onto the motherboard, bad things can happen.
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Think your pc is at the end of its life.
I'd back up everything now while you can.
Look forward to a non-booting machine one morning in the near future.
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'in winter' - that's quite the prognosis for an unidentified sound.
You could be right... or it could be nothing.
Backups are always important because you never do know when a failure may occur.
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Make that WILL occur, jboy. It's just a matter of time. Backup, backup, backup. Always. Look for a fan that's not turning very fast or may even stop while you are looking. The noise will get worse. Much worse. Then, mercifuly, it will stop. Replace the fan now, before it causes overheat damage. HTH :)
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Everything breaks down - it's a universal law, so, pretty safe bet.
That's a far cry from "your pc is at the end of its life"
Certainly any and all warning signs should be investigated.
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Well, I would submit that it's somewhat presumptious to say anything with absolute certainty about a machine we've never seen (or heard)
Hope for the best.. prepare for the worst.
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Look inside NOW and find the noise. If you dont, something bad may happen. Sorry,I'm a proactive optimist.
Bad fan MAY not kill it, if it runs cool enough. Bad HD=dissaponting boot soon unless you do something. Backup!
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Thanks for your responses! I would say that I don't think the noise is caused by the fan - if I put my ear to the casing I can hear the low whirring of the fan, and it's not the noise in question. I think I overstepped the mark by writing that the noise was constant - actually it's a stop/start thing, being particularly active when opening and closing programs, logging on/off the net and using cut/paste on Word - the noise itself is hard to describe - 'fax machine' almost covers it, but there are creaks, grunts, chugging sounds - sounds like there's a whole electronic zoo in there... I'll have to get it examined, I think...
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Definitely advisable to pin down the source.
The additional info does suggest the sound is related to hard drive activity (you'd have a fair amount of disk-swapping with 64Mb) and could indicate a drive problem - however it may just be vibration.
Your modem's volume is muted?
Either way, check it out.
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mmmm well if it only happenes when you do things on the pc (ie using the Hard Drive) then your hard may be breaking down... its a terible thing, happened to me once and since then i keep regular cd backups of my data, if you can get access to another machine then i would advise taking the hard drive out of that pc and putting in to another and then copy the data to a CD,if you can, might wanna try getting a new drive... could diagnoise the problem and assumeing you save you data correctly then you can transfer the data to the new hard drive and vola! if that prob is solved then that good and you could take the oppratunaty to upgrade you hard drive space... but the key thing i think here is, have you noticed you pc getting slower? taking longer to boot up then normal?
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