Advice on laptop problem

[stevie_b]

My Advent 4211 netbook has recently been giving me problems. It started making a faint mechanical-sounding clicking noise/whirring noise from time to time (after being switched on for several minutes). It sounds like something is trying to spin up but failing.

 

Before I did anything about it, the laptop developed the habit of rebooting itself spontaneously, usually accompanied just beforehand by the weird clicking.

 

Thinking that it might be the fan at fault, I got hold of a utility to control the fan speed at different temperatures. Using that, I confirmed the fan can spin up with no problems. The only other mechanical thing I could think of was the hard disk. I tried searching for errors by booting into a live Ubuntu environment and used GParted to find/fix errors. It found an error in one of the partitions that it couldn't fix, but I think that may be due to the rebooting or whatever's causing the rebooting.

 

I've taken the hard disk out of the laptop, booted it and allowed it to just stop at the boot process (since no boot devices were present) and also entered the BIOS menu and left it. On each occasion, the laptop made a clicking noise and then reboots itself. Hard to say if the clicking comes before the rebooting, they're pretty much occur at the same time. With no hard disk, it doesn't make the spinning noise any more, so it must have been the hard disk spinning up momentarily and then shutting off again.

 

The laptop boots up OK if cold/cool until a few minutes later when it clicks/reboots. If just rebooted from a recent run, it takes much less time (a few seconds sometimes) before the issues start, so I'm thinking it might be temperature based.

 

It's got 2 RAM sticks installed: I've taken one out: no change. Actually it clicked and failed sooner than previously.

 

Any thoughts/advice as to the probable cause? I'm thinking heat sink failure on the CPU causing emergency shutdown, or hard disk *controller* failure, but they're no more than guesses.

[Graham S]

I had what sounds similar to yours with the other halves Sony laptop, pulled it to bits to find one of the fans had got out of balance. It would still spin but where it was out of balance it would hit the top/bottom of the fan housing? Have you pulled the fan set out to see if there is any witness marks showing where its been hitting? Is it a case of the fans aren't spinning fast enough to cool the CPU and then shutting itself down as its overheating?

 

I know i'm no computer dude but may help?

[stevie_b]

That's what I thought it was originally, hence my tweaking the fan settings. Due to swapping things out I've been running the laptop for the past couple of days with the case removed: it has the added adventage of being able to see the fan spinning. Also, removing the hard disk made the spinning noise stop, so I'm fairly convinced it's hard disk -related. Problem is, I don't know what on a laptop would cause the disk to spin then immediately spin down, then repeat a few times before finally rebooting itself but hanging.

[Scott]

Sounds like the HDD is on the way out Stevie. You REALLY want to backup anything that you need as it will probably die soon. Had this sort of thing happen loads of times in the past.

 

Pick up a cheapie on ebay, or borrow one from another lappy, to see if it cures the problem.

[Graham S]

Sounds like the HDD is on the way out Stevie. You REALLY want to backup anything that you need as it will probably die soon. Had this sort of thing happen loads of times in the past.

 

Pick up a cheapie on ebay, or borrow one from another lappy, to see if it cures the problem.

 

Good advice there!

Lost everything on my last laptop when it died... So after I got another I bought an external drive that I back up all my pics etc from all my machines in the house!

 

Have a word with Gav mate, he has millions of everything laying around somewhere! Well, he's my computer bitch and has never not fixed anything!

[stevie_b]

Sounds like the HDD is on the way out Stevie. You REALLY want to backup anything that you need as it will probably die soon. Had this sort of thing happen loads of times in the past.

 

Pick up a cheapie on ebay, or borrow one from another lappy, to see if it cures the problem.

Thanks for the suggestions guys, I appreciate it.

 

I'm not so sure it's anything to do with the hard disk. I physically removed the hard disk from the laptop (I couldn't disable it from the BIOS) and it still did the clicking thing after a couple of minutes accompanied by an unsuccessful reboot. With the HDD removed, I tried letting it pause when it realised there was no boot device, I tried booting to a live Ubuntu on a USB stick, and tried entering the BIOS menu and let it sit there. It wouldn't hold any of these states for more than a few minutes.

 

Reading up a bit about the Advent's cooling, I wonder if I've fried the southbridge...? If I have it's Game Over for my motherboard.