PC question

[MikDee]

Re: PC question

MikDee, also if you buy more memory, don't waste your $$$ on buying more than a total of 3GB for your system. XP has no ability to address and use more than 3GB of memory but I think 2Gb total is really all you'll need.

Again thanks for the tips Nelson, I've bought memory before from Kingston for my older Dell computer. Yes my latest computer is about 2yrs old now, and I just keep collecting (cluttering it up) with new Pics. small videos, & some music I was also wondering if anyone knows if there's a way to divert, and increase the memory (I have) being used, (memory cache, I guess?) for certain applications, or tasks?

 

[drewmitch44]

Re: PC question

Just a thought nobody mentioned yet. It may not be your hard drive your hearing at all. How long has it been since you cleaned your vents and fans. It could be a fan bearing going bad Just a thought and my two cents worth.
Also if the Hard Drive is failing. It will make a noise before it finally dies.

That is a good point and tonight after work i got a can of that can air. Its late now so im not going to clean all the fans out tonight. I had thought about that before you posted that. I built this PC and the case has 4 fans, 1 power supply fan, 1 motherboard chipset fan, 2 heatsink processor fans (they are stacked on top of each other), and a fan on my video card's heatsink. So there is a couple of fans in there. After i clean them. I can disconnect them one at a time until i figure out if thats the problem.

 

[drewmitch44]

Re: PC question

I meant to say also i have 1 GB of memory. I am running a 500 GB HDD. Its a SCSI drive. I think thats it. Its not the IDE type of cable that it uses.

 

[ThumbPkr]

Re: PC question

If it is your harddrive making the noise your harddrive activity light should show it.
I noticed that one of my laptops running XP is set to defrag the harddrive during idle periods which accounts for the activity on that particular computer.I have not investigated it further.
There are many obscure settings that could account for it.
I found another setting to add to my tweaking to correct poor performance,mainly my desktop was hanging while using IE 6.0* and after many scans and head scratching I opened the Java console and deleted the history on one of the settings there and it really helped with the hanging.
I am not saying that this will be for everyone but it might be an option.Ron G

 

[Euro95]

Re: PC question

It could be a defragment of your disk, or your anti virus doing a scan.

But those scsi disks, man what do you use those for. Usually those were used for server-like computers with multiple disks. Some of them spin up to 15k rpm and they are certainly not meant to be quiet.

What you could do is have your disks turned off after a certain time of inactivity. You can set that amount in power options in start>system settings.

 

[drewmitch44]

Re: PC question

OK well cbavier, you were right!!! I cracked the case open this morning to clean the dust out of the fans. I first used my finger to stop the fans from spinning one at a time. When i stopped the video card fan the noise stopped! All this time I was doing all kinds of things and the whole time it was the video card fan!!!! This noise sounds EXACTLY like the HDD when you are doing something like defrag or if you are installing a large program or downloading a large file. And its a raid drive i think. Its just not that big fat cable that my old HDD used to use. Anyway Thanks so much guys for all the help!!!!!!!

 

[Tail_Gunner]

Re: PC question

Here's a few programs that when used as a group will clean up most comps.

http://www.malwarebytes.org/ Very good program..Thanks 45

http://www.spybot.com/en/download/ Old but very good use them both and not to much spyware will survive.

http://www.ccleaner.com/ That will clean up your internet cache history quite nicely. One word of caution CC will delete all of your passwords know that up front...

There all free...run all those and if she's still acting spooky you probably have a hardware issue..

Strickly a opinion your milage may vary.

 

[drewmitch44]

Re: PC question

Didnt you see that it was just dust on the fan? Thanks though for the programs!!!!!!!!

 

[NelsonQ]

Re: PC question

Glad to see you found the issue. Hopefully things are quieter now

 

[arboldt]

Re: PC question

BTW - it's pst likely a serial ATA drive, not SCSI. The old ribbon cable EIDE drives have been superseded by Serial ATA over that last 3 or 4 years.

I've got an external enclosure so I can use an internal EIDE drive as an external USB drive, but it's getting really hard to find any EIDR drive any more.