Failing HDD? Overheating? URGENT!

[Liam.]

Same problem as always, I've used trial and error and everything but the problem persists and I can't identify where it comes from:

The Problem
After awhile of normal use or playing games, I suddenly completely lose performance and a high-pitched whine emits from my computer. I can not work out where exactly it's coming from.

What I have done
First I was told it was my processor overheating, I bought new thermal paste and applied it - no change.
I also tried adding 1 case fan to the back of my case - no change
I then added a 2nd case fan to the front of my case - no change
I have removed the floppy drive, the DVD drive AND my AGP graphics card - no change

What I can't do
Replace the hard drive - I don't want to waste money buying one if it isn't that. My only spare drive has failed and my parents will not let me touch the hard drive downstairs...

On a game I asked people what it could be and I was told my HD is being thrashed because I was using a page file. I only have 512mb ram and I can't buy more because I just spent all my money on a 17" monitor. I've had this problem for a very long time and if I don't get it fixed I will cry and then smash this waste of money into pieces.

What can I do!?

[megawhompertoo]

Re: Failing HDD? Overheating? URGENT!

Are you sure it isn't the power supply? It might--MIGHT--be overheating, the "whine" might be from the the psu fan.

Hard drives, however, are usually the first component on a pc to go bad.

If this JUST happens when you're gaming, then I'd guess it was a heat issue. Does your computer have adequate access to fresh air? When you installed the fans, are you sure you installed so that they were taking cold air in the case, and moving hot air out (the fans have "direction").

Also, it could be the CPU fan. Do you have temperature monitoring software? You can download everest home edition and pay attention to your temps.

As far as the pagefile--don't worry. You HAVE to use the pagefile, and there's nothing wrong with it. (There are some folks with 2 or 4 gigs of memory who are turning their pagefiles off--but they are silly.)

If you don't have the time or technical inclination to monitor your temps, here's a simple suggestion: carefully take the cover off your pc, set it out in the open (carefully), and (carefully) blow a table fan directly into it while playing. If the problem comes up again, and if it is coming from the HD, then (sorry) there isn't much you're going to be able to do about it except get a new HD. If the problem goes away, then you know you need to figure out how to cool the computer better. You may find that the processor heat is the issue, because the fan is giving out after a certain amount of time.

In short, you'd be in a much better position to know what was going wrong if you knew--for sure--where the sound was coming from and if it was heat related.

[edit] good luck

[Heavy552 AWG]

Re: Failing HDD? Overheating? URGENT!

Hard drives are the devices you just cannot live without. Unfortunately they will fail at some point in the future.

Megawhompertoo gave you good advice.

Do you have a CD Burner or a DVD burner? Start saving these files with these extensions:

.WMV (Videos Windows media player) Some videos are one per disk due to max capacity of 700 mb/disk
.AVI (Quicktime or MPEG videos)
.DOC (Word Documents) You can put all on one disk
.Txt (Notepad Documents) You can put all on one disk
.ppt (Powerpoints) You can put all on one disk
.pdf (Acrobe Acrobat files) You can put all on one disk

Game Patches you have downloaded (This will save hassle of redownloading)
Photos you may have on your machine
Music files like Mp3's
Any other information that you dont want to lose.

Games like BF2 are reinstallable.
Windows can be reinstalled.
Internet can be reinstalled.
Antivirus can be reinstalled (This you should do after windows but before internet as computer survival times is less than 5 minutes according to www.sans.org)
anything else like Xfire, Chat programs, passwords you use to visit websites etc. Screenshots you may have saved.

Back them up by burning onto DVD or CD ROM. You probably will go thru 10 disks if your data is anything like mine.

Explain to your Parents that Hard Drives will fail and it is a good idea to have several hard drives in one machine. Dont worry about the page filing at this time. I have mine on C:\ while the BF2 game runs off my RAID 0 (Group of hard drives working together) and videos, music and schoolwork on another hard drive and a obselete computer in another room with a bunch of saved stuff.

Hard drives are "Cheap" these days I think you can get a 200+ gig with 16 mb buffer and NDQ for around 40 ceonts a gig on newegg. (OEM meaning you might have to supply your own cables and screws)

Regarding cooling, get a can of air and blow out the dust bunnies from your case, especially around the video card once a month. You will find some in the power supply fans (NEver never never NEVER open up a power supply it has a capacitor that can and probably will kill you) and around the case fans on your machine.

Good Luck

[LoD]

Re: Failing HDD? Overheating? URGENT!

Probably the PSU or HDD. I would get a spare of both and do some testing.

[lonegunm4n]

Re: Failing HDD? Overheating? URGENT!

the PSU will kill you before you realize what you've done. It's best to not take it apart.

[Papi4baby]

Re: Failing HDD? Overheating? URGENT!

Like someone said, back up all data that you think you can't affored to loose. Could also be your PSU, do not open it to play with it, all or most PSU's contain capasitors, and like lonegunm4n said they could kill you.

[Liam.]

Re: Failing HDD? Overheating? URGENT!

Thanks everyone, I have had the side of the case off and had a house fan on it and it still happens - in fact the temperatures don't seem to change.

The temperatures are ALL normal, I checked using Speedfan and Everest and it is always around 40*C in BF2 and 30*C on idle but this could be wrong, I know how software isn't brilliantly accurate.

I'll start backing up very soon, my grandparents have some easter money for me and I'll MAYBE have enough for a new 80GB HDD, if not a quick trip down the bank which I don't want to do, I'm saving to go to San Francisco next year on holiday! I can't really go higher because of this.

Thanks everyone, I REALLY appreciate this.

[Sir. bzb]

Re: Failing HDD? Overheating? URGENT!

The description of the noise could be better. Google can find you sound files of hard drives giving up the ghost, there are not many noises they can make. Ive killed many hard-drives and i cant say a whine would make me raise an eyebrow as a whine is caused by something spinning which is not out of the ordinary, a scraping, grinding, clunking or a thud would make me sweat.
I would suggest you diagnose its deffinately a fault and not simply normal operation before spending any money.

With 512mb ram you will run out of memory, if the hard drive hasnt been active for a period of time it will have turned itself off to preserve its life span. Windows writes inactive processes to the swap file, a bit like sleep mode, it wont retrieve this information and swap it back into ram unless it needs to so you can have a swapfile without your disk in use. When information is next needed from the harddrive it may not be ready and must spin up to speed which makes a whine and takes a while, in the interim between windows calling it into action and it becoming ready you will notice a performance drop, thats normal, if it gets to the stage where an active process is in the swap file you'll notice serious slowdown as your entire system is then limited to speed of your harddrive which will be spinning its little heart out desperatly trying to keep up with a never ending demands.