I need to know what to do about the hard drive making noises and freezing on my HP Pavillion Brio.?

Question

I have an HP Pavillion Brio, its a nice computer. Windows XP...But i am having a bad problem with it freezing every 2 seconds for minutes at a time and it makes a terrible noise as well if the speakers are on. I have tried every way in the world to fix it but nothing works. can someone please help me.
Thanks

Answer 1

jackie is half right on the life span of the hard drive, but in my experiance a hard drive making a clicking noise (starting and stopping automaticaly) almost constantly instead of running smooothly can mean it is failing, but in my case i had two drive start making the clicking noise, i thought it was the drives at fault, it turned out to be the fault of my PSU the 480W PSU i had in my system was not powerful enough or was faulty and as such was unable to cope with the full load i placed upon it. after installing a 650W PSU in my system those same drives that i thought were failing are working better than ever.

if you tried everything to fix it the problem would be solved by now.
there are several reasons why your system would freeze like this, the first and most common is you are attempting to run too many processor intensive programs at the same time.
the second is the hard drive may be badly fragmented.
if neither of these is the case, then the hard drive itself may be on the way out so it is time to buy a new hard drive or the PSU is failing and the PFC built in is not functioning correctly consider buying a new PSU, however before buying any new hardware try the hard drive in another computer see if it still makes the same noise. if so then that confirms the drive is possibly on its way out.
The only other things it could be is malware, or your system may have a corrupted program or two causing your system to use more CPU processing power than is actually required, for example a corrupted SQL installatiion such as installed with MS office and with pinnacle TV tuner cards to name just two. so try reinstalling your software programmes see if that helps, if you have not already done so try to run system restore to a point before the error occured.
if by noise you mean the system freezes during a song and the song freezes but constantly repeats a second or less of the song being played this is common when you have corrupted SQL or are running multiple proccessor intensive programs.
no knowiung the exact spec of the system you describe, if the processor is less than 2Ghz with less than 2GB Ram you will typically only be able to run for example windows media player, your choice of malware program such as norton antivirus, system works or other such software, your internet browser and maybe one and one only other low cpu program like an IM program.
if you want better advice please message me direct with yahoo answers advice in the subject line then repeat the question and all the answers to date in that message. as well as listing what you were doing imediately prior to the system freezing up.

alternatively direct your questions direct to HP customer service and the experts will be able to diagnose the problem and offer you a choice of remedies to suite your needs, and if the system is under guarantee still and it requires service they will be able to help with that. just remember to make sure you back up your personal data before doing any work on the system or sending it for service.
as i said in my opening there are many cause for the system to freeze and it is hard to give 100% acurate answers with incomplete information. however i have offered the best info i can with the limited information available.

Answer 2

if ur pc freezes for sevaral seconds check the RAM xp need a minimum of 256MB RAM and if u hav 512 it will good , if u are a high end user lik u do work with lots of big software, then u need to have 1gb RAM.. the noises if present only during a particular freezeing then jst fixxin th freezing will fix it, and noises can be due to some problem with the speaker connection to the CPU, check the connection, if not it might be due to a soldering problem in the mother board , to resolve this the best would be consult a hardware professionl. do this only even the sound comes after fixing the freezing problem. other possibilites of freezing are uncompatiable software installed. does this problem come now only or from the day u installed XP? if yes upgrade RAM and try

Answer 3

I custom build computers for a major hobby. The most common problems for what you describe is as follows: #1 bad memory chip,#2 bad power supply in the computer case,#3 faulty hard drive,#4 bad connection from power supply to motherboard or to hard drive. There are free memory tests on the internet, just do a word search. you can test hard drive by downloading for free a utility called drive fitness test, it is a program that lets you make a bootable floppy disc and then start up on that disc and check everything about that hardrive without damaging any data. good luck!

Answer 4

The making noises I was going to say sounds terminal ... but if it's only noise through the speakers it's more than likely just interference ... as for freezing that sounds more like either a program/application error or a lack of Ram ... or both

Answer 5

Yeah. When you hear a hard drive spins fast and make a loud noise, it mean it is going out mabe in a month. You have 3 choice.
1. You can CLONE or GHOST your hard drive to another Hard Drive or DVD then Format it. Make it a new RAWR Hard drive with NTFS. Make sure you del everything on it and reformat it to NTFS. To do that, you have to go to CMD while in windows XP Boot mode and type in FDISK. then Del your hard drive. Then install Windows XP or restore it. Using HP give you a Back up CD name RESTORE OS and INSTALL APPs. when you reinstall windows that will take care of the the freezing and mabe the noise of your hard drive.

2. You can go to a Computer Retailer and buy Norton SystemWorks 2006 Premier by Symantec.
IT HAVE TO BE PREMIER!! that one will give you a disk you need. it's called Norton Boot Disk.
It has a tool which repair your hard drive and it will scan everything thing and fix it. This is 1 of the best program i use myself. It will scan your hard drive and list all the things you need to fix. and it will fix it for u. Its very Easy. It will repair your hard drive too, but the only prople is, its gonna take about 5-8 hours.

3. Heres the last thing you can do and it will work.
Buy a new hard drive. when your hard drive spins fast and make loud noise, its gonna die out sooner or later. Take your computer to any Computer Retailer repair shop, i like Comp USA because i use to be the tech manager their and they charge very cheap. well anyways buy a new hard drive, buy any1 thats on sale with saving or rebate. then ask them to install it for u. its only going to charge you 30$. Make sure that your new hard drive have to be MASTER NOT SLAVE. YOU HAVE TO TELL THEM. after they install it, take it back home and install windows. Just put the restore disk in and it will do everthing. after you install windows with your new hard drive, everything from your old hard drie is now SLAVE. you can access any file in their. and thats how you fix your problem.

- Jack Ngan
MCP (Microsoft Certified Professional)
MCDST (Microsoft Certified Desktop Support Technician)
CompTIA A+ / Network + Certified (www.comptia.org)

Answer 6

How long have you had the PC and is it still under warranty?
This cannot not be fixed here on line you should take it to HP or a reputable computer repair facility. Good luck!

Answer 7

It sounds like your hard drive is dying the noise could well be the heads flicking back and fore trying to read from it - worse it could be the sound of the heads scratching the surface of the drive, backup immediately and replace

Answer 8

Is probably dirty, try to open it or take it to the experts and they'll fix it. Mine was doing the same thing, and when they opened it they found a lot of dust inside. That's very bad for the computer

Answer 9

Sounds to me like your hard drive is going out. You should get it in to someone ASAP so you do not lose all your data. Back up your computer if you can, in safe mode.

Answer 10

If your computer is not working properly while you are working on it, it could be a problem with device drivers, hardware or software.
Detailed instructions at http://tinyurl.com/yk5zpr