guess the busted laptop component

[Vincent Sammel]

hi

my laptop started dying yesterday and i'm not sure which component is the cause.

basically i hear some grinding noise before it blacks out and attempts a restart (but usually fails). often some flickering on the screen accompanies the grinding.

i seem to be able to run the laptop longer if the adapter is unplugged or if it's been previously turned off for an extended time (~1h).

i have tried running it with the battery removed and switched between intel and ati gpu. results are pretty much the same. am currently trying to run a diagostics on hdd and see what's what.

can anyone please help

 

[Rocketninja16]

My un-educated lottery guess is the HDD.

 

[wanderer11]

Grinding could be three things: fan, hdd, or optical drive. Since the optical drive wouldn't cause an issue that's out. Now that leaves us fan and hard drive. A bad fan could cause it to overheat. Download/run hwmonitor. How hot does your cpu/gpu get? How exactly is your computer failing? Is it simply turning off or does it freeze/bsod or something else? If it freezes where you are unable to even move your cursor then it's a bad hdd.

 

[Vincent Sammel]

the blackout - if the laptop's been running for a while and i've been trying run some applications or browsed the web, the gentle grinding noise begins to emit and then the laptop goes dead and immediatly tries to reboot itself but doesn't get beyond a blank black screen. if i press the power button it shuts off but tries to make brief reboots in ~5sec intervals (to stop this i remove the battery, and after a short while i can semi-successfully run it again)

the grinding - as far as i can tell by placing my ear on the machine, it seems to be coming from the big vents (at least there it's the loudest but it might be because of the bigger holes), probably where the gpu's and the cpu are. the hdd is on the other side.

after the hdd diagnostics are done, i'm gonna try to powerdust the vents with a compressor - please let me know if you advise against this.

 

[wanderer11]

Sounds like a bad fan and it's overheating. Use hwmonitor to see temps.

 

[Vincent Sammel]

i ran hwmonitor (just downloading it caused laptop to crash again)

 

[Rocketninja16]

i ran hwmonitor (just downloading it caused laptop to crash again)

That's really not that hot, not enough to crash it anyways, is that the temp it was at just before it crashed?

 

[jeff-j]

What is the make and model of the laptop. I would say it is the fan, even if the CPU does not get that hot, if the fan speed falls below a certain RPM the laptop could power off to reduce risk of over heating.

 

[Vincent Sammel]

took this like a minute before crashing, while the buzzing sound began, also dusted the fans a bit before.

the laptop is a 3 year old acer aspire 4820tg

 

[jeff-j]

I noticed in your first screen shot of HWMonitor the min temp for your HD is 95 on the min and 96 on the max with a value of 95, and in the screen shot you just posted the min is 73 and the max is 98 with a value of 98. I do not know if that WD hard drive has a temperature sensor in it or not, or if it is just added some numbers in. When the fan trys to speed up can you feel any air flow coming from the vent on the side of the laptop?

 

[Vincent Sammel]

air flow seems fine from the side vent.

while trying to listen to the sound my laptop makes i think that while it runs smoothly the component is making like a quiet whistling morse sound which shifts to an agressive grind once i start running different applications.

 

[Rocketninja16]

I think jeff might be right about the CPU fan, a lot of desktop rigs won't boot, or the'll post an error and prevent boot, if the cpu fan isn't plugged in, or is malfunctioning.

When you start running a lot of apps the cpu fan will spin up to keep the cooling in line while cpu gets hotter from the work.

If that fan is damaged and starts self destructing when it speeds up, the motherboard might be shutting the system as a fail safe, thinking that the fan is no longer present.

 

[jeff-j]

I would say replace the fan, look on Ebay you should be able to find one for cheap. There will be some time involved with tearing down the laptop, but if you take your time it should good smooth.