PC's hard drive constantly making noises?

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Toby@ToyTuning.com

Banned - DO NOT BUY FROM TOYTUNING
Hi all,

The hard drive on my PC isn't making any bad noises it's just constantly working with the little light flashing, even when I'm not doing anything? It literally doesn't shut up all day!

Does anyone have any ideas? It's 400GB and has 210GB free. The PC is set to do Virus/Spyware checks every night, I defrag it regularly and try and keep on top of maintenance with my limited PC knowledge would anyone have any ideas why it does this?

When I first got the PC it had Vista Home, I upgraded to Vista Ultimate but the upgrade CD didn't work right as I found out on the forums, typical Microsoft! You would think an upgrade would just upgrade it but no. I followed instructions on how to delete the old one and re-install the new, messed it up and ended up with two windows folders on my PC. I got advised to leave it as it was as it was working, if not broke don't fix it etc although I do have two windows on there!

It all works fine, is pretty speedy but wondered if this was maybe why the hard drive was always working as maybe it's confused? For some reason in the last week it hangs on start up for 4 minutes with a black screen and little flashing white line at the top, I thought it was buggered but it's not and loads every time just takes 4 minutes or more. Once on all is well.

Any ideas?

Thanks for any advice.

Toby
 
A

Adam_Glanza

Member +
press control alt and delete once to bring up the task manager and go into processes, see wat the cpu is using, if there is one with high levels report back
 
T

Toby@ToyTuning.com

Banned - DO NOT BUY FROM TOYTUNING
I use it for work Pete.

Top 5 processes are:

Internet Explorer - 138,000K
Desktop Window Manager - 52,000
Outlook - 35,000
Vista Sidebar - 21,000
Windows Explorer - 12,000
Hard Core Porn - 8,000

Okay last one was a joke but what about the top 5, anything unusual there?

Thanks lads,

T
 
Dub-Se7en

Dub-Se7en

Lifer
also, how much ram you got? i find on anything less than 2gb vista is constantly using the pagefile = lots of hard drive activity.
 
davehart

davehart

Member +
If the disc is making a louder noise than usual then it would suggest its starting to fail. Some makes of disc are louder than others so sometimes its nothing to worry about.

What make Hard Drive is it? I've had quite a few fail in my time and had some which were more noiser than others. If its made the same noise from new then its nothing to worry about, just a feature of the disc. If its got louder than I would say the needle in the drive is on its way out.

The slow loading time may well be due to a bad sector on the disc that it reads until it finds the boot file that loads windows.

If its under warrenty I'd back up the drive and have it replaced.
 
T

Toby@ToyTuning.com

Banned - DO NOT BUY FROM TOYTUNING
I used to use Modzilla Firefox and Modzilla Thunderbird email but I use a the N series Nokia phones which sync with outlook and not the others, when I moved to outlook which TBH I found much better than Thunderbird I had a nightmare transferring email files and folders but I must admint Firefox was much better than IE, it just doesn't seem to be that compatible for favourites so mucks up my phone.

@ Ian - Where do I find how much ram I have? Think it is 2GB though remember that in the shop.

@ Craig - Beat you to it :haha:

@ Dave - Yeah I had a hardrive go and know the noise you mean, like a wirring sound but doesn't seem to do that. It makes a slight noise though now when it's hanging but I back up ruthlessly everyday as have been down that route before and it's not fun. It's a Compaq pc who are made by HP so shoudn't be too bad, not sure who makes the HD?
 
davehart

davehart

Member +
You can see how much RAM you have by going into the 'Control Panel' and selecting the 'System' Option.

That should bring up a menu with various tabs and should state your processor, ram etc. On one tab you can go into the 'Device Manager' which lists all the componants on the PC.

in XP its Start > COntrol Panel.

I'm assuming its the same with Vista.
 
davehart

davehart

Member +
Those specs should be fine for running Vista as those Intel CPU's are pretty decent. 2BG of RAM is fine, anything more than 3GB and the PC dosent use it anyway.
 
Dub-Se7en

Dub-Se7en

Lifer
that spec is plenty Tobes,

there can be a number of reasons why the hard drive is constantly accessing, anti-virus programs and such running in the background usually cause it.

i wouldn't be too concerned really unless you notice a definate performance decrease, my girlfriends laptops hard drive is always on the go and it's working fine. :)
 
davehart

davehart

Member +
Yeah, my old desktop PC runs fine and that Hard Drive make a right racket. Just one of those annoying PC things.
 
Gryzor

Gryzor

Admin
yep its a fine spec for vista,

virus problems : make sure all the latest microsoft updates are installed there was a big security breach in ms explorer before christmas

make sure that the virus software is uptodate..


other than that its hd problems backup replace the hd and reinstall. :eek:
depending on the type of hd then put the old hd in slave mod and connect it in again you should have a nice clean system with access to all your old files ;)

find out the type of hd by system properties -> device manager -> disk drives -> details and google the drive part number..
 
T

Toby@ToyTuning.com

Banned - DO NOT BUY FROM TOYTUNING
Thanks lads appreciate the help, as long as it doesn't die I'm happy! We have three of these Compaq's but mine is the noisiest by far.

Guess what, it's just stopped making a noise and I can finally here myself think. Anyhow thanks guys one less thing to worry about :)

T
 
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Toby@ToyTuning.com

Banned - DO NOT BUY FROM TOYTUNING
Thanks Gyzor it's all up to date both Windows and Virus. I'll keep backing up daily to external HD and cross fingers it will be okay :)

I've been looking at Vista 7 but think i'll stick with this for now. Rep added all.

T
 
Gryzor

Gryzor

Admin
Toby just as a tip if your backing up use 2 external hd using each 1 alternate days.. if that makes sense..:homer:
 
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