Weird clicking noises...

[freakuency]

...heh! going for most interesting title of a post award!

anyway, ive been trying to solve a problem that ive had with my laptop now for the last few weeks.

its creating a clicking sound, rhythmically, approximately every 4 seconds, and it sounds VERY similar to a scratched harddrive, but... i thought it was the hard drive originally and bought a brand new samsung 40gb drive. installed it, and sure enough, the noises have started again. they seem to be originating from the left hand side, where you'd rest your palm.

i get performance spikes and the only indication is that system idle goes from 99% to approx 75% and (the rather helpfully named) system jumps to 24% for about 1/2 a second and then back to normal...

apart from being annoying with the clicking sound, it affects process's if im running a couple of applications at once!

here's a sexy pic to try to show whats going on...

this, as i said from a fresh hard drive, is not a spyware / virus / malware issue... this is the first time this install has gone online!

oh, the computer is a hp omnibook xe3 (gc) p3 700mhz and 256mb sdram.

 

[superdave1984]

Fan hitting something maybe?

 

[freakuency]

would this cause the cpu/system change though?

ive got no real issues about opening the laptop, but i just found it real hard whilst trying to change the hard drive... (til i found the easy way! lol)

i just think that if it was the fan, it would be a constant click, as opposed to a 4 sec cycle... but thanks.

 

[killians45]

Not necessarily. If it is a wire bundle or a bearing it may happen that way. Also, as far as there being activity on the CPU, just because there is no use at the time doesn't mean the CPU just flat lines. You have many other processes working in the back ground taking up cycles.

 

[TheMajor]

Not necessarily. If it is a wire bundle or a bearing it may happen that way. Also, as far as there being activity on the CPU, just because there is no use at the time doesn't mean the CPU just flat lines. You have many other processes working in the back ground taking up cycles.

These spikes are not normal. Not even my MMX gets spikes like this.

 

[freakuency]

and also, ive been keeping a close eye on my resources since i cut my xp installation down to next to nothing, and for a month period it was flatlining when idle!

the spike happened at the same time as the clicks as far as i can gather!

 

[TheMajor]

Maybe it is related to some kind of CPU throttling feature?

 

[killians45]

It could be normal if he has back up software like goback where any period of inactivity causes the machine to check for altered files and setsup recovery points. It usually runs in the back ground, add that in with other programs, and it will cosume proc but it really depends on his system program configs