Number 211 - December 2000

What's That Noise?
by Russell James from July 2000 PC Alamode Alamo PC
Can you hear that? Everybody be very quiet and listen very carefully. Can you hear that low humming sound? Do you hear that soft whine? These are the sounds that you should be hearing from your computer if everything is going all right. The low humming of the fans blowing. This is the sound that a good fan should make. The soft whine of the hard drive disk spin-ning. The soft clicking as the information is accessed. These are all very important sounds to listen for if you have a computer.     But why should you care what your computer sounds like if everything is going all right? The answer is the same one that I use when it comes to my automobiles. If you know what sounds are supposed to be heard, then when a different sound is heard, you will ask why? You will want to find out what is causing the new sound. If you have not heard this new sound before, then there needs to be some investigation on your part to find out what is making the noise. When the brakes on your car start to squeak, you know they are telling you to get ready for a trip to Auto Zone.     There are not a lot of moving parts inside your computer. This tends to make the sounds that we hear pretty standard. This also makes the diagnosis of new sounds that crop up a lot easier to track down. The fans and the disk drives are the main culprits when it comes to sounds that don't come from the speakers.     There are usually two or three different types of fans that will be in your computer. The fan in the back next to the plug is inside the power supply. This fan keeps the power supply cool. If this fan goes bad then you will most likely lose the power supply as it heats up. Without the power supply, you will not be able to use the computer. The bearings that let the blade turn are usually the culprit when this fan goes out. You will notice that the soft hum from the fan will get faster and slower. You may hear a clicking sound as the bearings go out. These changes in the sounds are an indication that a problem is developing. Don't be afraid to put your hand over the cover of the fan. If you can get to the back of your computer, take a look and make sure that the blade is turning at quick and steady speed. Is there a slight warm breeze coming from the fan? This is the way that it should feel if the fan is pulling the air from inside the power supply to the outside.     Let me give you an example of why this is important. I had a call at 3 o'clock last Friday afternoon. The man was looking for a power supply for an Acer 300 Altos Server. He had been on the phone with Acer tech support and with their help had diagnosed the problem to be a bad power supply. I did not know for sure what power supply would fit into that machine so I got his name and number and told him I would make some calls and get right back with him. He was very agitated and made sure to let me know that this was the server that he used to run his point of sale and accounting for his business. He was very clear that this needed to be fixed as soon as possible on this late Friday afternoon.     I made a couple of calls to my suppliers and surfed the Internet looking for information on this particular model. I was looking for someone or something to tell me that this was a standard run of the mill power supply. All I could get out of Acer was a part number. I called the customer back and told him that I could not be sure if it was a standard power supply without looking at it and let him make the decision on what to do. We could take a regular power supply out to his business and hope it would fit. If it didn't fit we would need to order one from Acer. Time was not on our side. He chose to order the part from Acer and have it delivered Saturday morning. I agreed to be at his business by 10 a.m. on Saturday to install the power supply. The order from Acer never made it. After taking the top off the system I saw that it was in fact a standard power supply, installed a new one and was on my way. While talking to the customer, I found out that he had been hearing a weird sound coming from his computer for the past week. He could have called me on the phone before it died and we could have diagnosed the problem ahead of time and fixed it before it took his system down. If he had only listened to the new noises coming from his system. It was trying to tell him that there was a problem. He chose not to listen and it cost him.     The next fan is the one that is attached to the CPU or Central Processing Unit. The CPU is the brain of your computer. This is arguably the most important component inside your system. The fan keeps the CPU cool so that it can do its work. If the CPU overheats it can cause a multitude of problems. Error messages, blue screens, your computer suddenly restarting, all could be caused by an overheating CPU. This fan will	usually give you some advance warning of impending failure. Changes in the sound of the fan may be hard to detect because of its location. This would be something that you would want to look at while you have the cover off the unit during your regular cleaning of the inside of your computer. While the cover is off, turn your computer on and look at the CPU fan to be sure that it is turning at a fast and steady speed. Be careful not to put any-thing inside the case while the power is on. There is always the chance that you will short something out and you will have more problems than you bargained for. This reminds me of a problem we had at the shop this last week. I had a customer who brought his computer in because he was having all sorts of problems. The computer was locking up and giving him a variety of error messages that he could not seem to pinpoint to a particular software program. He had been to the store and bought himself a copy of Windows 98 upgrade version. He was hoping that upgrading to 98 would correct the software problems that he thought he had. He tried and tried to install but for one reason or another was never able to complete the job. He talked to Microsoft, and a number of other tech support people for about a week before he finally brought the machine to us.     We turned on the machine and noticed how slow it seemed to be running. It was a Pentium 200 with 32 Mb of RAM. It was running more like a 486 with 4 Mb of RAM. It was very easy to recreate the problems that he was having. The upgrade to Windows 98 took about 3 hours to complete. There were numerous error messages that kept popping up. The blue screen of death was a very regular visitor to this system. We decided that there had to be something loose and took the top off to reseat all of the hardware. Nothing was loose so we fired it back up again with the cover off. The CPU fan was barely turning at all. We replaced the fan and turned it back on. The speed of the machine was like night and day. The error messages have not returned. All this because of a $5 fan. Think of how you feel after a long day in the sun. You would be moving slow too if your brain got that hot. That fan had to have been making a lot of noise before it finally died. If the customer had only listened to what his computer was trying to tell him. Luckily, the CPU doesn't seem to have sustained any permanent damage from the excess heat. This could have been a lot worse than it turned out to be. At least his fan was turning a little bit. Sometimes they will stop all together and then you can have a serious problem.     The last fan that you might have in your system is what is called a case fan. This fan is in the front or back of the case and is used to help to pull air into the computer. Most of the lower end systems will not have a case fan. It will make the same kind of noises that the others will. Sometimes they will grind. Sometimes they will squeal. Sometimes they sound like they are changing speeds. All of the sounds that are not normal sounds should be investigated before they turn into a big problem.     The last sound that you do not want to hear is anything coming from the hard drive. This is the disk that holds the operating system and programs for your computer. This is the device that the CPU calls on when you click on an icon to activate a program. The hard drive will normally make a low whining noise. This is the sound of the disks spinning inside the case. Sometimes you can hear a low clicking sound as data is accessed. These are the normal sounds that you will hear. Any other sounds need to be investigated. Sometimes you will hear a louder tapping sound when you are running a program. If the computer seems to lock up while you hear the tapping, then there could be a problem. This is usually a sign that the controller is having a problem finding the data that it is looking for. This is not a good thing to hear. It would be time to have a good backup and to have the computer looked at.     As you can see from the examples, this is not brain surgery. All you need to do to help yourself is to pay attention to the sounds that are coming from your system. If you can recognize changes in the sounds, you will be able to have hardware problems taken care of before they take the whole system down. Be proactive in the upkeep of your computer.     Listen to the sounds and act on any new sounds that you hear. If you wait until the sound goes away, then the fan has died completely. This means that the minimal amount of cooling that you got from the noisy fan that was turning slowly--just became no cooling from a fan that is not turning at all. It is not going to get better because you ignore the problem. It will get better and you will save yourself a lot of headaches if you diagnose and take care of problems as they come up.
Number 211 - December 2000