What chirps in a notebook?

Here's a hardware question:

What in a notebook would make an always-present "chirping" sound? Only when turned on/not hibernating - seems to be coming from the speakers, but also can hear it loudly from the vents nex to the keyboard!

It's rather high pitched - in fact, my father can't even hear it. I can do some more testing, but I'd like to hear any ideas anybody has!

The specific notebook is a Dell E1505 (dual-core Pentium M, GB RAM, 7200rpm hard drive, x1400 dedicate graphics).

Thanks for any ideas!

 

Normally the hard drive makes some chirping sounds. That could be it. Check to see if you hear the sound when the light turns on. The little light that says your hard drive is in use.

It could also be a fan.

Hope this helps,
Tim

 

Thanks for the input -

The hard drive does make chirping sounds, but of a different kind (more like clicks) - I could be wrong, but I don't believe that's it. I'll do more testing, though.

I also believe it's not the fan, since I hear the fan running even when I don't hear the annoying chirping/squeaking (the only time the chirping/squeaking isn't there is when I boot into Diagnostics mode).

However, I have noticed that the chirping seems semi-synchronized to the hard-drive's clicks - except that when I test the hard drive in diagnostic mode, the squeaking/chirping isn't there.

Maybe I should try burning a Linux boot CD and seeing if the noise is there...

 

This is probably the strangest part:

The sound goes away when any audio is playing, and then as soon as the audio stops, the sound starts again!

This happens even when the speakers are muted, so you can't even hear the audio, but if you press "play" the chirping/high-pitched noise goes away, and you can relax in silence (except for the fan, which is quite tolerable). Then press pause, the high-pitched noise comes back.

I've also noticed that the sound goes away when the processor is under heavy load - say I open up an instance of "My Computer" by pressing WindowsKey+E - the high-pitched noise goes away for about half a second. Same if I open or close any window. If the hard drive is working hard (copying a large file), the sound seems to cut in in-between clicks.

So strange

 

Dell support isn't so bad after all

After 4 hours on the phone, testing various settings, reformatting, removing components one by one, we determined that the culprit seems to be the hard drive!

They're sending me a new one, and if it doesn't work, then we'll pick it up from there, but they seem pretty confident (and I can see why)! Meanwhile, I'm going to burn a Linux Live-CD, and if we're correct, the annoying chirping shouldn't be present, since a Live-CD won't be accessing the hard drive.

So if anyone else has a similar problem, or similar annoying high-pitched noise that isn't constant and faint like an LCD's, then you should know what to try first .

 

Yeah! At least it was just the hard drive like I thought. Could have been worse.
Tim

 

These high-pitched sounds are usually from your motherboard or more specifically the capacitors or something like that. When your CPU is running at its different speeds or just running anything at all it makes those sounds.

It is a known "thing", I say thing because it isn't really an issue, unless it's really loud, then it could be a problem and possibly dangerous for your notebook.

Don't worry about it and too bad you went through reformatting and stuff like that to lose your data. Even if you backed your stuff up it's so annoying having to reinstall windows all the time and having to set everything back up to the way you like it.

If it really was your harddrive and you are having it fixed, great, but I still think it was the known chirping/buzzing of your CPU.

Cheers,
MIke

 

i get a chirp sound. comes from my speakers though.

plug in some headphones and see if the chirp sound comes from them

 

High pitched noise often comes from power converters. As such it can be dependant of load. Another possible culprit: backlight inverter.

 

Thanks for all the additional info! They'll come in handy if it turns out the problem wasn't the hard drive, after all.

Darbyjack: connecting external speakers (or muting the internal speakers) doesn't seem to have any effect (I tried this earlier).

Ice-Tea & Shampoo - it seems like you two are saying similar things (I'm assuming the power converters Ice-Tea is referring to contain the capacitors Shampoo is referring to? Unless power converters refer to the AC adapter, in which case, AC vs. Battery has no effect). It sounds worrisome, and if I weren't still under the 21 day return policy, I would be afraid that I'm just stuck with a notebook that makes unpleasant sounds!

Luckily, I don't think I have anything to fear. If you're correct, and the new HD doesn't have any effect, then I'll send in the whole notebook so they can inspect the motherboard. And if they send a replacement, and that noise is still there and still too loud for me, well then, I'll just return it and find some other laptop! I was looking at an Asus [Z62f] that was a close contender - I still prefer the E1505, especially for the value, but the Asus would certainly have its own advantages .

 

I know a bunch of people had problems with a certain capacitator on their HP laptops (the x1000/zt3000 series) and they would just take the computer apart and put a little hot glue on it, fixed it right up. Never had problems again. Sounds to me like this is the same type of thing.

 

I'm living in London, and I have the same problem with my brand new Inspiron 6400.
But as I see - I took out the hdd and booted in from a puppy live cd - the culprit is not the hdd. Practically I took it apart, and the noise comes from the inverter. Very strange btw how the sound follows the hdd and the graphical operations.

 

Just a small update:

Problem remains unsolved. I returned the laptop

Definitely beware of this: Dell will NOT extend your 21-day return period to cover time spent trying to sort out issues (including replacement parts shipping and mix-ups and delays on THEIR part). I'm glad I called when I did and was actually able to get through - if I had waited much longer, I would have been stuck. Not that the problem necessarily wouldn't have been solved, but that was a risk I wasn't willing to take.

Good luck with figuring it out! Another symptom that I noticed a little later on my own e1505: similar noise can be heard in the headphone output, but not under all situations. The whole thing just seemed to change its symptoms around all the time, which made it harder to debug (at first it did the stop-when-music-is-playing thing, but then it didn't do it anymore, but then it did it again!)

Wish me luck on finding a suitable replacement!

 

Wow lots of complaints recently about chirping notebooks.

Maybe it has to do with the new duo core?

Anyways yeah, it is just the capcitors/motherboard/cpu, something along those lines and is normal unless you can hear it in another room.

Cheers,
Mike

 

I think I'm going to try buying another e1505, and return it if it exhibits the same behavior...

 

Success!

No annoying noise coming from the replacement!

Still, the headphone output isn't as pristine as I'd like (especially when the CPU isn't throttled down) - gotta find out if that's fixable as well.