Boiling a kettle?

petercharlesfagg · March 20, 2015, 09:33:26 AM

Friends,

My PC sounds as if it is boiling a kettle!

Not the full boil but when it starts, the grumbling bit!

Every time I boot up this grumbling starts and the whole PC slows down, drastically.

If I leave it grumbling for about 20 minutes then everything returns to normal, apart from me?

I have run a Virus Checker, Malwarebytes, Ccleaner and defragmented the hard drive. I checked the system operation box indicating speed etc. and nothing untoward.

Any thoughts?

Peter.

oscar · March 20, 2015, 09:36:42 AM

Mine did that when I had a virus checker set to scan at start-up.

Sprintex · March 20, 2015, 09:37:32 AM

Hard drive starting to give up the ghost maybe? Has a lot of work to do when you start up.

"If" it is that I'd get it changed before it goes completely or you may lose everything you have on there

Wait and see what others say first though

Paul

Bealman · March 20, 2015, 10:34:43 AM

I agree.

Sounds "physical" to me rather than software. Something in the guts is growling and telling you something.

Adam D · March 20, 2015, 10:42:13 AM

Could be a few things, can you tell what the source of noise is ie. fans or hard drive? The harder a computer work the hotter it gets and to compensate it turns up the fans. Over time dust etc builds up in the fans and the heat-sink of the processor meaning the fans run more often. If you have a can of compressed air or hover you may be able to pop the side of and clear it out which should help somewhat.

Calnefoxile · March 20, 2015, 11:44:19 AM

Quote from: Adam D on March 20, 2015, 10:42:13 AM
Could be a few things, can you tell what the source of noise is ie. fans or hard drive? The harder a computer work the hotter it gets and to compensate it turns up the fans. Over time dust etc builds up in the fans and the heat-sink of the processor meaning the fans run more often. If you have a can of compressed air or hover you may be able to pop the side of and clear it out which should help somewhat.

You beat me too it, I was just about to say the same thing.

I clean my PC out roughly every 3 months, just power it off, disconnect all the cables, take the lid off, take it outside and either blow it through with some canned compressed air or very carefully use the hose on the Vacuum Cleaner to clean the dust out.

Then put it all back together again and that may cure the issue, if it doesn't then I suspect, as Sprintex has suggested, the hard drive may be on it's way out. Back all your stuff up to an external device, like another hard drive or USB Memory stick and replace the drive.

Oh do you have a copy of the Operating System Software to rebuild the PC?? If not then there should be some software on your machine that'll allow you to make a recovery disc, do this and you'll be able to rebuild your PC with a new hard drive, just follow the instructions it should be fairly idiot proof.

Regards

Neal.

Tom U · March 20, 2015, 12:30:43 PM

My best estimate is that it is the cooling fan. I had one with the same symptoms, started noisy then settled down to a rough purr. I think cleaning won't help as it is probably the bearings shot. Your computer slowing down could be because the cpu chip is getting too hot - they slow down automatically to try to prevent overheat. How hot is the air coming from the fan outlet?
If it was the Hard Drive, I think the noise would be more intermittant as the hard drive running is not constant - depends on access requests.
Hope you get it sorted.
Tom.

MikeDunn · March 20, 2015, 01:40:13 PM

Have a close listen ... the fan is at the back, the hard drive is (normally) at the front; that should help you. Fans are cheap (a fiver ?) ...

Of course - it could be the PSU ... that has its own fan ...

Mike

MalcolmInN · March 20, 2015, 01:51:11 PM

Quote from: Tom U on March 20, 2015, 12:30:43 PM
I had one with the same symptoms, started noisy then settled down to a rough purr.

Seconded, me too !

either way, get all your valuable data off and onto your pair of terabyte USB backup drives, just to practice safe hex.

Malc · March 20, 2015, 03:06:39 PM

First thing to try Peter, is as Oscar suggests, turn your virus checker startup scan off. Then check if the indexing is switched on.

railsquid · March 20, 2015, 05:31:21 PM

Quote from: MalcolmAL on March 20, 2015, 01:51:11 PM
Quote from: Tom U on March 20, 2015, 12:30:43 PM
I had one with the same symptoms, started noisy then settled down to a rough purr.
Seconded, me too !

Yes, I'd bet money on it being one of the fans - very probably the CPU fan. If the bearings are shot, it'll take a while after the computer starts for them to settle down and let the fan run at reasonable speed; until then the CPU will be overheating and running erratically, possibly the operating system will detect that and further slow things down in an attempt to stop the CPU overheating.

petercharlesfagg · March 20, 2015, 05:43:58 PM

Quote from: oscar on March 20, 2015, 09:36:42 AM
Mine did that when I had a virus checker set to scan at start-up.

Oscar appears to have hit the nail on the head!

I stopped the Virus checker doing an update on start-up and the sounds disappeared!

Will do updates manually in future.

My thanks to everyone, Peter.

MikeDunn · March 20, 2015, 06:56:15 PM

Peter,

You're probably just masking the symptom by doing that ... ...

When you manually fire off a virus scan, do you still get the noise ?

Mike

petercharlesfagg · March 20, 2015, 07:00:03 PM

Quote from: MikeDunn on March 20, 2015, 06:56:15 PM
Peter,

You're probably just masking the symptom by doing that ... ...

When you manually fire off a virus scan, do you still get the noise ?

Mike

Yes, I do? No more than I expected actually? Hope it isn't symptomatic of something more dire?

MikeDunn · March 20, 2015, 07:23:46 PM

Well ... if you get the same "boiling kettle" sound when you're stressing the disk ... personally, I'd get a new disk & clone the contents !

Mike