A oh-so-loud PC

[Clashero]

I highly doubt this is the right place to post this, but any other message boards are usually filled to the brim with idiots.
Simply put, my PC is too loud when it boots. It just started today. When I turn it on, it's horribly loud, whereas 3-4 hours ago it was anice and quiet booter. After Windows loads completely, the fans (which I suppose are making the noise) finally quiet down. I downloaded SpeedFan, but even setting the fan speed to 100% doesn't make half the noise the PC makes when it boots.
Please, Escapists, can you help me out?
Oh, and I'm running on Windows XP SP2

 

[Fanboy]

Loud boot sounds are usually more to do with hard drives and disk drives. Take any cds out of the drive before you boot down and they won't spin up when you boot up. Not much you can do about loud hard drives though.

 

[GRoXERs]

Well, are you sure it's the fans? I thought I was having fan trouble on my old Dell, and it turned out to be my CD drive committing hara-kiri, spinning up for no apparent reason.

 

[J-Man]

Check your hard drive for any general physical faults, then put it back in. Unfortunately these problems tend to be vague and unique in each scenario, so there's no definite fix. I occasionally have loud boots, removing any CDs or DVDs is usually the answer.

 

[porkfryrice616]

It might be that your pc is just old. My pc is about 5 years and it has XP sp2, it does the same thing on start up.

 

[Uncompetative]

Get a Mac Mini, it is so damn quiet you barely know it is on.

It is a mystery to me why PCs blather on about multimedia and gaming superiority and then you can't actually hear them over the noisy fan.

 

[SirSchmoopy]

Get a Mac Mini, it is so damn quiet you barely know it is on.

It is a mystery to me why PCs blather on about multimedia and gaming superiority and then you can't actually hear them over the noisy fan.

THANKS FOR THIS HELPFUL AND INSIGHTFUL TIP.

But just encase for some odd reason this fantastic post telling you to swap to an overpriced fisher price computer doesn't work.... I very much doubt it's the fans. The loud noise sounds for sure like your CD/DVD Rom doing it, which you can prevent simply by taking the CD out of the computer before booting down. If you figure out that it isn't a CD/DVD rom and it is the computer fan, you might want to try simply opening up the case and cleaning it out with compressed air.

Then again if you only use your computer for facebook/music/photos/calculator functions and marking down the day of your period on you calender, by all means the mac mini is a fantastic computer if you feel like throwing money into the wind! 2.0ghz processor and 256 ram for only the low low price of 599 dollars? Man sign me up sally. I totally want my computer to have the specs of computers from 1999 which will help since I heard that back then macs were Y2K proof which is gonna be important when my grand children are using this fantastic piece of hardware in the year 3000.

 

[Abedeus]

Get a Mac Mini, it is so damn quiet you barely know it is on.

It is a mystery to me why PCs blather on about multimedia and gaming superiority and then you can't actually hear them over the noisy fan.

Yes, my PC is making 200 decibels. I must use a special headset or I'll go deaf.

You do realise there are laptops I can use, too? And they are quiet AND can play games.

Woah, woah, Schmoopy.

He can just turn off the Autorun.

 

[Starnerf]

Do you have a floppy drive? I've found my floppy drive to be extremely noisy at boot time.

 

[Abi79]

It might be that your pc is just old. My pc is about 5 years and it has XP sp2, it does the same thing on start up.

4 years old, XP SP3, and mine does the exact same thing. I opened it up and the fans were really slow at first. Then, after a while (as Windows booted up, or I just left it standing in BIOS, doesn't seem to matter), their speed increases and the PC becomes really quiet.

Maybe something's happened to them and they are unstable? It's like dropping a coin, which makes an annoying sound until it doesn't move anymore.

 

[Jamash]

Get a Mac Mini, it is so damn quiet you barely know it is on.

It is a mystery to me why PCs blather on about multimedia and gaming superiority and then you can't actually hear them over the noisy fan.

THANKS FOR THIS HELPFUL AND INSIGHTFUL TIP.

But just encase for some odd reason this fantastic post telling you to swap to an overpriced fisher price computer doesn't work....

Ha ha.

"Feel the wrath of Canadian lumber fool!"

 

[GRoXERs]

Why did this turn into a damned Mac vs. PC debate? I've owned both (I'm on a Mac now) and I just don't really notice much of a difference in sound level between the two - both are whisper quiet when you first buy them and both get noticeably louder the older they are.
But yeah: It's probably either your CD or floppy drive, or it could be your hard drive (though that's more of a grinding noise than a whirring like a fan).

 

[porkfryrice616]

SirSchmoopy. You're my new hero

 

[Bluntknife]

Get a Mac Mini, it is so damn quiet you barely know it is on.

It is a mystery to me why PCs blather on about multimedia and gaming superiority and then you can't actually hear them over the noisy fan.

THANKS FOR THIS HELPFUL AND INSIGHTFUL TIP.

But just encase for some odd reason this fantastic post telling you to swap to an overpriced fisher price computer doesn't work.... I very much doubt it's the fans. The loud noise sounds for sure like your CD/DVD Rom doing it, which you can prevent simply by taking the CD out of the computer before booting down. If you figure out that it isn't a CD/DVD rom and it is the computer fan, you might want to try simply opening up the case and cleaning it out with compressed air.

Then again if you only use your computer for facebook/music/photos/calculator functions and marking down the day of your period on you calender, by all means the mac mini is a fantastic computer if you feel like throwing money into the wind! 2.0ghz processor and 256 ram for only the low low price of 599 dollars? Man sign me up sally. I totally want my computer to have the specs of computers from 1999 which will help since I heard that back then macs were Y2K proof which is gonna be important when my grand children are using this fantastic piece of hardware in the year 3000.

Damn...someone beat me to the flaming.

I'm going to agree with everyone else and say its proberly one of your drives, Disk or Hard drive.

If its neither then it's down to your fans at which point I shall direct you to my favorite PC modding website, frozencpu.com

Its where I get my fans and stuff from.

 

[Starnerf]

If you can open your computer case, try starting the computer with no case fans plugged in. If that doesn't stop the sound then work your way through the drives, disconnecting power and restarting, until you track down the sound.

 

[Steelfists]

1. How old is your PC?
2. Buy some cable ties. Open your PC and clean the dust out from your hard drive and CD drive. Make sure that all the cables inside the case are tied into neat bunches to avoid constraining airflow.
3. If you open bios (hammer F5 as your PC is booting, I think) and poke around, there will be an option for which drives you use when starting up your PC, or at least which order to use them in. The three in question are Hard Disk, CD Drive and Floppy. Fiddle around with the settings and you might be able to use process of elimination to figure out which one is causing the problem.

Woah, woah, Schmoopy.

He can just turn off the Autorun.

Lets not go fucking crazy here.

 

[Grand_Poohbah]

Get a Mac Mini, it is so damn quiet you barely know it is on.

It is a mystery to me why PCs blather on about multimedia and gaming superiority and then you can't actually hear them over the noisy fan.

Yes, my PC is making 200 decibels. I must use a special headset or I'll go deaf.

You do realise there are laptops I can use, too? And they are quiet AND can play games.

Woah, woah, Schmoopy.

He can just turn off the Autorun.

The vibrations created from 200 decibels would disconnect your brain from your spinal cord. Yay for useless facts!

 

[Clashero]

As it turned out, it was Ms. Sarah Brightman living in my CD/DVD drive causing the trouble. I took out her CD from the drive and everything's running fine.
It still leaves me to wonder why it was so sudden. The CD had been in the drive for about a week, and it had never made that noise. Well, doesn't matter now.
Thanks everyone for your help!

 

[Laughing Man]

Fans you cannot really do anything about and the bigger the fan is the more sound the fan will make.

Actually on PCs it's the opposite way round. Smaller fans have to rotate at higher speeds to shift the same volume of air so they make more noise. You can resolve fan noise by removing dust from the blades as dust build up can cause instability as the fan rotates. You can also get fans that are designed to run quieter. Failing that you can usually adjust the fan speeds in the BIOS or you can buy an in line resistor which lowers the fan speed.

Biggest causes are

a). The DVD or other optical media drive as stated remove any discs that are in the drive prior to booting.
b). The graphics card. As Windows loads you'll find that when it loads the drivers as Windows boots the GPU fans will spin up to whatever speed you have set them to in whatever GPU monitoring program you use. You could try downloading Rivatuner and using that to adjust the GPU fan speed.

 

[TwistedEllipses]

Do you have a floppy drive? I've found my floppy drive to be extremely noisy at boot time.

I think I saw one of those in a museum once, actually scratch that I still have nostalgia for that particular obsolete format and it feels wrong to mock it...

...anyway with a windows XP pc, he's unlikely to have a disc drive.