Fruit Machine Chat

Unfortunately I'm the type of person who knows how to turn things on and thats about it, so I ask for the help of somebody who knows more than what you can write on the back of a stamp about computers.

The problem is......everytime I turn my PC on it makes a loud 'whirring' noise. This can be either a low toned grunting whir, or a really high pitched sounds-like-its-gonna-take-off noise. A couple of whacks and the noise used to stop and everthing would be fine but these days I'm more or less having to slam it on the floor and beat the crap out of it.

Now the noise starts whilst I'm on the PC (it never used to do that) and it'll say there is a Hard disk problem. Have I dislodged something during my attacks, and what is the noise in the first place? Is it easily sorted and if so whats the most I should pay somebodt to sort it out?

Any advice would be very welcome, thank you.

Sounds like it might be a problem with one of the cooling fans. I had a wire too close to one once and it made a horrendous din! Could you safely open up the case and take a look at where the sound is eminating from? So long as you don't pull anything out of the guts of it, you should be OK. However, having said that, try and get hold of a PC-savvy chum if you can to have a quick look under the bonnet.

Yeah, sounds like one of the fans. There could be a bearing gone, or it could just need a bit of a clean.

I usually open mine up and give them a squirt with an air duster (tin of compressed air, basically) if that happens.

Cheers guys. I've opened it up and can't see a great deal wrong (not that I know what I'm looking for) but there is a loose wire close to the fans. I'm fooked if I know where it goes though!

At least I've given it a good clean - damn dusty inside, I was expecting to find a spider or three, must of been hiding I think.

Mine was doing this, it used to run the fans at top speed for ten minutes before it would even boot up.

I got rid of some fluff and it's been fine, so far, since.