Help a newbie please

[Peco]

Hi, can someone help a complete newbie?

Firstly, I'm not a gamer, a modder, or a system builder, just an average pc user.

I recently bought a Shuttle XPC on Ebay. The seller is a large trader who sells loads of pc's and pc equipment, and he gives a warranty on his items. My XPC has a label on the base indicating that it is an ex-school PC.

It's a G2 model, I can't be more specific as I have no way of knowing if it was originally sold as a barebones or fully built system. It's the model with 2 blue indicator lights on the front facia.

The blue indicator light on the right appears to simply be a Power-On light, as it is permanently on when power-up and running, the one on the left is the problem one. I don't know it's function, but it too is blue, but it doesn't emit a blue light, but rather, a yellow light. Sorry if that sounds daft, it's just that most of the time it has the appearance of being an unlit blue light, but which flashes every half scond or so in yellow, when the pc is powered-on. When pages are loading, this light burns yellow almost constantly, and when it does this it emits a faint buzzing or rattling noise. The noise becomes worse when the pc has been running for an hour or so, and it's really getting on my nerves. The cooling fan runs pretty quietly, making this buzing light noise even more noticeable.

Any ideas on the problem? Or the solution?

[Peco]

Meant to add, I could return the pc under warranty, but the postage costs would have to be borne by me. I just felt it might be cheaper and easier to fix this myself if I had some advice.

[d3fiant]

sounds like the hard drive LED that is basically telling you that there is activity. If the noise is directly relational to the flashes I would suggest you center your attention on the hard drive, is it mounted correctly and tightly. If its a knocking noise then it may be that your hard drive is on its way out, there are a number of apps that can test for this.

[Mossy]

Is it not the hard drive LED light this flashes when your hard drive is in use? hence the noise of your drive?

[Peco]

Thank you all.

I opened the case up. The 2 lights had a bit of play in them, i.e. in the front mounting plate which holds them, so I powered it up and listened to check if the yellow one was still buzzing and rattling while I was holding my finger against them firmly. I now know the noise is due to something else, because I could still hear it. The noise appears to be coming from the HD itself, but it sounds to me like an abnormal type of noise, not the normal faint sound of whirring inside the HD. I couldn't find any any loose screws, so I'm forced to conclude it is the HD after all.

The yellow light is indeed the HD indicator light. As for those applications to test the HD, I'll have to determine which brand the HD is, as those applications all seem to correspond to particular brands. I haven't sussed-out how to remove the HD. With my old Evesham tower PC, the retaining screws were visible, and it was obvious how to remove the HD, but it's not as obvious to me with the shuttle. I think I'll need to remove it just to be able to see the brand name, as it sits just now, I can't see it properly. I looks though like I may have to remove the optical drive and floppy drive just to access the HD.

I think I'll try downloading the programme available on the Crucial site, the one that scans the components of ones PC and identifies them all, with any luck it should tell me the brand of HD, then I can try using an application to test it. If this fails, I'll try physically removing it, then identify it, and finally try one of those test applications as suggested.

Thank you all for your support.

[SHare]

Sounds perfectly normal to me. My dad had one of those for a while and the drive was pretty noisy in it despite the fact it was fairly quiet in his old case. I wouldnt worry about it.

[max99]

Download 'Dtemp' and it'll tell you the exact make and model of the drive, as well as the temp and SMART info.

The sound may be perfectly normal, but run one of the diag tools to be on the safe side. It it checks out ok but the noise still bothers you, do a search on 'silencing hard drives' and you'll find many suggestions.

[kalniel]

Hard drives often produce a quite crunchy sounding noise, which although unnerving, is perfectly ok. I would suggest testing how well it's screwed in - you might just need to tighten the screws, or if it's a screwless system put some paper in to wedge it tighter.