On Tuesday March 25 2003 11:43 am, Jordan Elver wrote:
> Lately, I've found that my pc won't start the first time I press
> the on switch. If I press reset it starts up fine. Also, the pc
> generally sounds more noisy. I'm wondering if this is a hard drive
> issue? There have been no recent hardware changes so I can't think
> why this would be happening. The machine is about 3 years old.
Generally cold starts where you hear whining and buzzing are from
cheap fans that use sleeve bearings instead of ball bearings. OTOH,
these don't prevent bootup other than if the fans are so impaired as
to cause overheating before the system can complete the bootstrap
process.
Harddrives (and CD drives) can also produce similar sounds when
cold, and it's not a good sign. Same deal, bearings. You can check by
placing a rod of some sort (heck, I've used a spoon), in contact with
the drives side and the other end against the bone just by your outer
ear opening. This greatly amplifies the sound you hear from the
insides of the drive, and pinpoints which drive. You might get away
with it for a while, but it's a sure sign of pending mechanical
failure of the device.
I lost an important 30g, 8 month old, IBM, 7200rpm to this symptom
;( In that case, the drive was run 24/7, till I went out of town
for a week. It would never spin up again, system wouldn't boot. Lost
whatever I didn't have already backup'd to CDr's.
--
Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas
Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft?
Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
