Need advice, Clevo P170SM clicking sound noise, pc doens't start up

Hi all,

Hope this is not the wrong thread to post this..

I need some help with my brother laptop, P170SM, bought it not even a year ago.

Recently the pc will start up only after trying to press the power button for a few times not as normally as it should be.

The situation got much worse during this couple of days and while the is pc trying to start, we always heard a strange "click" sounds coming from the HDD, not sure thus.

From what I have read over the internet, it might be the HDD is failing.

Any suggestions?

Thank you so much in advance.

 

So it does eventually boot always? I presume nothing else is wrong and you haven't made any changes to the hardware recently eg added RAM. Firstly I would unscrew the bottom remove the HDD and plug it back in again in case something has slipped out of place.

Create a linux boot disk when you eventually get in. When booting enter BIOS and go into boot options. Move DVD to the top of the list and remove the HDD. If the power button works each time without the HDD in, then there's the culprit. If not then the rest depends on your warranty position - if it's not the HDD then you may want to RMA it instead of stripping out hardware piece by piece to see what might be failing.

 

It does actually boot but its slowly getting more difficult, it got worse in this couple of days.

And no, he didn't change or upgrade any parts recently.

I actually thought about a similar solution, I was going to suggest to remove the HDD and book from a bootable USB stick Ubuntu desktop, to see if the laptop starts with no issue.

What do you think? Would that be possible?

thanks for your reply.

 

yep, thats definitely another valid option important thing is to create an OS environment thats not dependent on the internal HDD.

that clicking sound sounds familiar, ive also had an HDD failing on me like that. if i were you id make sure ur brother makes a backup of his important files on that HDD before it fails completely. data recovery is pretty expensive!

 

Thank you so much all, problem solved:

Definitely an HDD failure, one of his friends repair laptops, he found out with a professional machine that is not spinning correctly anymore.

Replaced it with a Samsung 850 Pro :thumbsup:

 

lol, now THATS what id call an upgrade! good job

 

Yes indeed it is! Perfect excuse

 

We need to take the chance when we've got it....