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Geek Culture / Mysterious clicking noises on laptop. Need some advice.

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Yodaman Jer
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Posted: 10th Feb 2011 01:38
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As the title says, my laptop has started making this AWFUL clicking sound within the last half hour or so. Someone on facebook told me it was most likely my graphics card, and I'm thinking they're right. Here's why...

Intermittently, over the last couple of weeks, my display has acted a little weird. Sometimes it likes to flicker and then switch off all of the Windows Aero effects and default to the Windows 7 Starter edition look (ick), but then it switches back a few seconds later and acts like nothing ever happened. This has happened at least twice in the last two weeks that I can think of. And now this mysterious clicking has appeared (though it's calmed down since I've started typing), so I'm a little worried.

This is my laptop, the only computer I can use full-time. If it goes I'm not gonna be able to do some things I like to do, like program with DBP for example. This is perfect timing too because my warranty expired just a couple of months ago so I'm pretty much dead in the water. Thanks HP.

Do you guys think it's the graphics card? Do they usually click when they're about to go or display the other symptoms I mentioned? I could really use some tech advice here guys. If it goes during the life of this thread I'll let y'all know and ask which computer I should buy next.

Thanks!
-CoffeeCoder

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thenerd
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Location: Boston, USA
Posted: 10th Feb 2011 02:00
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Turn off the video card through Device Manager, see if that does anything... if you didn't think it was that I would say it was the hard drive.

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Yodaman Jer
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Posted: 10th Feb 2011 02:31
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Actually the noise has stopped now.

If it starts up again though I'll try that suggestion. I thought it was the hard drive too, so I did something risky and re-started my system (and Windows decided it would be the perfect time to install 8 updates, of course ), and then once it booted back up again it seemed fine but I could still hear some clicking.

I'm betting it was probably just something stuck in the fan for a bit, although that still doesn't explain the flickering. I guess we'll see what it does in the future.

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Yodaman Jer
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Posted: 10th Feb 2011 06:30
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Okay, so there wasn't any flickering, but it's started clicking again after not doing so for roughly 3-4 hours. I've been spending the last hour or so programming a game and running it constantly to check things out (like ya' do when coding), and after a while it came back. Not as bad as it was at first, but it's still there. I think it's definitely the graphics card.

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PAGAN_old
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Posted: 10th Feb 2011 08:14
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thats your HDD clickin. ...its gunna diee lol

dont hate people who rip you off,cheat and get away with it, learn from them
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Fatal Berserker
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Posted: 10th Feb 2011 12:56 Edited at: 10th Feb 2011 12:56
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it could just be something in your fan, its hard to tell with just 'clicking'

[edit] oh it flickered, then i guess its the gcard

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Yodaman Jer
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Posted: 10th Feb 2011 21:21
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Quote: "thats your HDD clickin. ...its gunna diee lol"


Files are backed up just in case.

Quote: "it could just be something in your fan, its hard to tell with just 'clicking'

[edit] oh it flickered, then i guess its the gcard
"


I thought it was something stuck in my fan too (still need to eliminate that possibility but I really don't want to take my laptop apart ), but the flickering happened a few days ago and so I'm thinking it's related. It hasn't happened for a few days but I'm still waiting to see if it will.

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Yodaman Jer
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Posted: 14th Feb 2011 23:32
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So a friend gave me a link to a website that had some hard drive failure sounds on it, and I think that may be what this is. While the sounds have gotten a little quieter, it definitely sounds like it's the HDD going bad (although no damage is yet evident).

Does anyone have any recommendations for a laptop hard drive? I'm thinking I might just buy a new one of those instead of a whole new computer if/when it croaks. I'd like to stick to a price beneath $100 if it all possible.

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Phaelax
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Posted: 15th Feb 2011 20:55 Edited at: 15th Feb 2011 20:58
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Under $100 for a 2.5" drive? Very easily done. Now depending on how old your laptop is you'll need either sata or ide. I can't find ide laptop drives over 80gb, but I bought a new sata 2.5" for a busted laptop a few months ago. $50 for a 500gb WD, that cheap enough for ya?

Download some kind of SMART utility checker and see if anything comes up.

"Only the educated are free" ~Epictetus
"Imagination is more important than knowledge..." ~Einstein
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Yodaman Jer
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Posted: 15th Feb 2011 22:17
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Quote: "$50 for a 500gb WD, that cheap enough for ya?"


Yeah, that would be a great price.


There's one on Newegg.com that is a 7200 RPM 500GB Western Digital for $70. Even that's a price I'd go with it pretty fast.

My laptop is fairly new (I got in November of '09), so I think the drive is SATA, especially since it's a 160GB drive and you said you could never find an IDE over 80GB. I'll look into a utility checker.

I have Ubuntu installed on my laptop and there's some disk checker thingy on it that I've used in the past. It actually told me a couple of months ago that I had a bad (but unused) sector on my drive. That was probably the first sign of this problem.

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PrimalBeans
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Posted: 17th Feb 2011 04:40
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if theres something in the fan it could cause other problems due to heating issues... on thing you could check is goto cmos on boot. Some chipsets have cmos utilities to check fan speed and cpu temp.
Just a thought.

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TheComet
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Posted: 18th Feb 2011 08:51
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*aweful nightmares of last HDD-crash returning*

Why would your GPU be clicking? It has no mechanical parts in it... Only thing that could cause something like that would be either the HDD, fans, PSU, or a mouse nibbling on you RAM.

TheComet

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Phaelax
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Posted: 18th Feb 2011 09:07
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Most GPUs these days have fans on the the chipset heatsink.

"Only the educated are free" ~Epictetus
"Imagination is more important than knowledge..." ~Einstein
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TheComet
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Posted: 18th Feb 2011 12:02
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Agreed, but if something is in the fan, it wouldn't cause the flickering... Well, I suppose it could lead to it overheating...

TheComet

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Libervurto
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Posted: 20th Feb 2011 06:30
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do you have your fan alarm on?
Turn that on in bios and it will sound if the fan stops, then you know whether or not it is the fan causing the clicking. I had a clicking problem with my fan, in the end I found that slightly loosening the screws that keep it in place stopped the clicking, I must have done them up too tight when I was tinkering.


Everything worthwhile requires effort.
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PrimalBeans
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Posted: 20th Feb 2011 08:01
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another thought: you could be looking at too much porn and your video card is cutting out the really dirty parts! J/K i really think that its a fan, a cd rom, or a hd. Those are the only moving parts on your pc. Check all of those first. Some early high speed optical drives had a problem with disk coming unseated and breaking apart, also motors can make some noise when they get clogged with debris. If you not afraid to take apart your laptop you might just take some time to jently clean out your cpu, case, and gpu fans.

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Yodaman Jer
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Posted: 21st Feb 2011 18:31
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@Primal Beans:

Yup, I took my laptop apart the other day and cleaned out what I could. I could not get to the main CPU main though; there was a few screws on my laptop that did not want to budge. I think their last threads kept getting stuck and they just wouldn't get loose. I even asked my father for help and he couldn't get them out either.

I could see something was definitely in my fan though; it was slightly pinkish in color and looked as though it was stick in the blades. No idea what it is, it could be a bit of thread (a lot of people in this house sew) or a little piece of paper. But ever since I put my laptop together again, the clicking stopped. I think that's a good sign.

I'm still going to buy that 500GB hard drive though.

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Quik
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Posted: 22nd Feb 2011 22:46
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IT'S A BOMB!
oh iam supposed to read the thread aswell?


[Q]uik, Quiker than most
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PrimalBeans
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Posted: 22nd Feb 2011 23:36
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might help lol

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