screeching sound

[killkenny]

not sure if this belongs here.. anyway i have a toshiba satellite a100-00a.. it happened twice already, i was surfing the internet and suddenly there is a screeching sound coming from my lappy.. it only lasted 1-2 seconds.. the screeching sound had like two different tones, what i mean is the sound starts with a screeching tone and changes to another tone, thats what the screech sounds like if that makes sense.. and it sounds like its coming from inside the lappy on the right side besides the touchpad..
nothing happened yet like something running incorrect but i m still worried as it happend twice.. what could that be?

[GrimJack]

it sounds like you are describing modem/fax training sounds - does it sound to you like a modem training?

[jbennet]

dit it sound at all like this:

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=oDyqctIw0SE

[GrimJack]

Oh, gawd - I forgot how irritating that is!

[killkenny]

no it wasnt that long, just like 2 seconds and it wasnt such a pleasant sound as in the video.. the pitch of the screech was a little bit higher.. maybe like a pitch coming from a glass beeing scratched but lower.. sry cant explain better =/

[jbennet]

sounds like a dying hard drive?

[killkenny]

huh really? but i bought the lappy on june 2007, so its not that old or doesnt that matter? hmm, could i have done something that caused that or can something like that just happen.. and if its really the hd, should i expect something to happen soon?

[jbennet]

depends, check its health via SMART

[GrimJack]

Backup what you want to save.
From your description, it is the hard drive - see this. Click on the lower left icon which will bring up the bottom; hovering will tell you what is where.

There is a lot of mis-information around about disk drive life - most of it hidden in the mean-time-to-failure babble. Buy yourself a new drive - you meant to upgrade anyway. There is a nice 200 gig drive available for that model.

[killkenny]

@jebennet: i dled the trial version, what do i actually do now.. i went to smart information and the status shows ok for everything.. is that all or do i still have to perform a check? if yes how would i do that because i couldnt find anything of how to perform a check..

@grim: i just formatted recently so everything is already backed up, currently i dont feel like i need to upgrade but if my hd really dies i might.. but i really hope that wont happen

[jbennet]

if the drive is reporting its smart status as healthy, thats wierd.

maybe the noise could be something different? some sort of warning siren?

[killkenny]

i also first thought maybe its some kind of warning.. i have nod32 but when i checked the logs, there was nothing reported.. cant think of anything else what could have given a warning tone

[jbennet]

overheat? some bioses send a wierd noise to the system speaker to warn of it?

[killkenny]

is there a way to check if there was an overheat?

[caperjack]

is there a way to check if there was an overheat?

yes,feel all around the laptop case with hand ,hot spots are caused by overheating !also if it were overheating it should shut down or at least not work very well ,i also suggest a can of compressed air to blow out heatsinc/fan and other ventilated areas of laptop.

[killkenny]

the max temperature i had until now was 40 degree.. which temperature would be considered too high or not normal? after running my lappy for awhile the only spot that got warm was where the hd is placed.. its not hot, just warm but i guess thats normal?

[jbennet]

yeah 40 is normal