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.
Mine did that when I had a virus checker set to scan at start-up.
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 :worried:
Wait and see what others say first though ;)
Paul
I agree.
Sounds "physical" to me rather than software. Something in the guts is growling and telling you something.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
First thing to try Peter, is as Oscar suggests, turn your virus checker startup scan off. Then check if the indexing is switched on.
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.
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.
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
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?
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
Peter if you need a new hardrive, do not got to PC world and pay their inflated prices. Check your pc to see which type of drive is fitted, if its fairly old it may have the wide ribbon cable( IDE/ interface) if it has the later thin cable, that is the SATA interface. If you have the old IDE you might have trouble locating a drive. Cheap drives are available from Scan computers here.3.5 drives http://www.scan.co.uk/shop/computer-hardware/all/hard-drives-int/166/699 (http://www.scan.co.uk/shop/computer-hardware/all/hard-drives-int/166/699) or 2.5 drives which are a bit cheaper, you might need a adapter to fit in a 3.5 bay. http://www.scan.co.uk/shop/computer-hardware/all/hard-drives-int/sata-ii-3-gbps-250gb-1tb-hdd (http://www.scan.co.uk/shop/computer-hardware/all/hard-drives-int/sata-ii-3-gbps-250gb-1tb-hdd)a copy of some cloning software would make it easy to swap to your new drive.
ps if you are not sure which drive it is, post a pic on here.
Quote from: lil chris on March 21, 2015, 11:02:04 PM
Peter if you need a new hardrive, do not got to PC world and pay their inflated prices. Check your pc to see which type of drive is fitted, if its fairly old it may have the wide ribbon cable( IDE/ interface) if it has the later thin cable, that is the SATA interface. If you have the old IDE you might have trouble locating a drive. Cheap drives are available from Scan computers here.3.5 drives http://www.scan.co.uk/shop/computer-hardware/all/hard-drives-int/166/699 (http://www.scan.co.uk/shop/computer-hardware/all/hard-drives-int/166/699) or 2.5 drives which are a bit cheaper, you might need a adapter to fit in a 3.5 bay. http://www.scan.co.uk/shop/computer-hardware/all/hard-drives-int/sata-ii-3-gbps-250gb-1tb-hdd (http://www.scan.co.uk/shop/computer-hardware/all/hard-drives-int/sata-ii-3-gbps-250gb-1tb-hdd)a copy of some cloning software would make it easy to swap to your new drive.
ps if you are not sure which drive it is, post a pic on here.
Chris, thankyou very much for your informative post.
Over the years I have purchased most of my PC stuff either through Novatech or Dabs, PC World is somewhere I have only been once and I am pretty sure I knew more about the items than the assistant!
Anyway, the PC is not mine, my stepson has loaned it to me, he built the server and so I have informed him of the situation and he will visit next Saturday.
Many thanks again, much appreciated, Peter.
Agree it's probably the scan on start up. Our's whirs away and clicks, rattles and swears, :D when switched on as we have a scan on start up as well.
Needed a new fan a while back but that was a totally different noise altogether
By the way, every time I see this thread pop up, I imagine a model steam locomotive in a saucepan of hot water.
Quote from: petercharlesfagg on March 22, 2015, 09:00:13 AM
Anyway, the PC is not mine, my stepson has loaned it to me, he built the server and so I have informed him of the situation and he will visit next Saturday.
Many thanks again, much appreciated, Peter.
Hi Peter
I can't help feeling that some of the posts responding to your problem may be an over reaction - that's just my opinion and I'm not knocking people who are obviously trying to help. Hard drives do whirrr, click and chatter to themselves when they're busy - like when they're doing a virus scan or indexing files - all my computers have done this.
Rather than panic about replacing a hard drive I would do a regular backup of your critical data if you don't do this already. So, if your hard drive does fail for some reason, all your data is safe.
If you don't have a backup drive then external hard drives are really inexpensive now and its a good idea to do regular backups of stuff you want to keep - sorry if I'm teaching you to suck eggs!!
Best wishes and good luck
:beers:
Quote from: austinbob on March 31, 2015, 04:56:20 PM
Quote from: petercharlesfagg on March 22, 2015, 09:00:13 AM
Anyway, the PC is not mine, my stepson has loaned it to me, he built the server and so I have informed him of the situation and he will visit next Saturday.
Many thanks again, much appreciated, Peter.
Hi Peter
I can't help feeling that some of the posts responding to your problem may be an over reaction - that's just my opinion and I'm not knocking people who are obviously trying to help. Hard drives do whirrr, click and chatter to themselves when they're busy - like when they're doing a virus scan or indexing files - all my computers have done this.
Rather than panic about replacing a hard drive I would do a regular backup of your critical data if you don't do this already. So, if your hard drive does fail for some reason, all your data is safe.
If you don't have a backup drive then external hard drives are really inexpensive now and its a good idea to do regular backups of stuff you want to keep - sorry if I'm teaching you to suck eggs!!
Best wishes and good luck
:beers:
Thankyou Bob,
My stepson visited at the weekend and assured me that it was normal and that I should not be concerned. He has a degree in computer technologies and built the server himself so I feel pretty sure that he knows what he is talking about!
Nevertheless, we HAVE taken the precaution of adding an external 180Gb HD and have transferred all our details, photo's etc.
Warmest regards, Peter.
Quote from: petercharlesfagg on March 31, 2015, 07:02:06 PM
My stepson visited at the weekend and assured me that it was normal and that I should not be concerned. He has a degree in computer technologies and built the server himself so I feel pretty sure that he knows what he is talking about!
Nevertheless, we HAVE taken the precaution of adding an external 180Gb HD and have transferred all our details, photo's etc.
Warmest regards, Peter.
A good solution I think - I'm sure you'll be ok - just make sure you keep your backup up to date (teaching to suck eggs again!!) still that's just me.
:beers:
Friends,
I thought you might appreciate knowing.
Sprintex and Bealman were correct in their thinking!
The PC crashed a week ago and now we are using my wife's laptop with a horrible screen, Vista (Which is terribly slow) and an external keyboard.
My stepson has taken the PC away and is going to load it with Windows 7 before he brings it back to us!
Hopefully we can be swift again one day!
Regards, Peter.