Laptop making annoying noise. Help!

[Whilliam]

Hello. My sister is having a problem with her laptop. When she turns her computer on, there's a noise at the left side of the laptop. She thinks its the fan. It makes a noise for like 10 seconds and stops then makes noise again. Even if she hibernates her laptop, it still makes noise. What should we do? Can anyone help please

[caperjack]

What should we do?

hi my suggestion would be to take it to someone who know laptops ,so they can take a look and listen ,very hard for us to say not sitting in front of the laptop ,as she thinks it's the fan ,then maybe its the fan ,you could start with a can of compressed air to clean out the fan ,you don't even mention the laptop model so we could at least search the net to see if the fan is actually on the left side ,thanks

[kaninelupus]

No need for the compressed air - putting vacuum to each of the vents should suffice. Could also be the hard-drive spinning up, esp if is only at start-up/wake-up times. If vacuuming doesn't stop the noise, would suggest either fan is on the way out or coming loose, or the HDD is also starting to fail.

Get her to back-up her important files and take in for a physical examination... is really the only way to be sure :)

[caperjack]

No need for the compressed air - putting vacuum to each of the vents should suffice. )

Maybe so, but I find that a vacuum doesn't suck off oily /cigarette dust

[Suspishio]

Maybe so, but I find that a vacuum doesn't suck off oily /cigarette dust

Don't tempt me!

[kaninelupus]

Maybe so, but I find that a vacuum doesn't suck off oily /cigarette dust

Touché - although even though wife n' I are both smokers, never had any build-up as a result in lappys, so never could figure that one out.

[caperjack]

Touché - although even though wife n' I are both smokers, never had any build-up as a result in lappys, so never could figure that one out.

must be something in the air here ,and the cheap cigarettes people smoke i guess

[kbabecki]

Did Windows 7 recently get put on the laptop? If so then make sure that the bios and all the drivers are up to date. I recently put Windows 7 on my Dell XPS m1330 and its fan would behave strangely. It would turn on and sound really loud, then it would turn off, then start back up again. After I updated everything the noise went away.

[Suspishio]

Did Windows 7 recently get put on the laptop? If so then make sure that the bios and all the drivers are up to date. I recently put Windows 7 on my Dell XPS m1330 and its fan would behave strangely. It would turn on and sound really loud, then it would turn off, then start back up again. After I updated everything the noise went away.

In your case, I believe that there was a coincidence of events; like something caught in the fan that eventually blew away or something like that - ish. Windows won't have anything to do with the fan!