Computer making a high pitched noise.

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Guest

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My dad has a six-year-old Dell desktop from the Intel Core 2 Duo era running on Windows XP 32-bit and wants upgraded to Windows 7 32-bit. It recently started making a high pitched noise. I took the case apart in my garage, cleaned the dust out, and powered it up to see what was making the noise. The fans on the case, CPU cooler, and PSU seemed to work fine, the DVD-drive was empty and there was no noise. After I put the PC back together and hooked back up the monitor, keyboard, etc., it made the high pitched noise again. My only guess is that the HDD is going bad and have backed up my dad's files to an external HDD. Just incase, I would like to ask you guys if there is any other potential area that I missed. Also, would a SATA 3 GB/s HDD work with this machine? Thanks.
 
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Onus

Onus

Titan
Jan 27, 2006
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This sounds like coil whine. If the drive heads were touching the platters, you would not likely have been able to get any data off, or by the time you were finished, kicked up particulate matter would have rendered the drive useless. It could be motor bearings in the drive though.
More likely though, capacitor aging has affected the characteristics of the PSU. Given its age, this is probably how I'd bet. Go over the motherboard, looking for any swollen or leaking capacitors; if you see any, consider it to be a likely occurrence inside the PSU as well.
 
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coreymcdonald855

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Feb 27, 2013
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As ONUS said, this is probably not the HDD. What you're experiencing is a PSU issue. Did you power it up in your garage? If so, it could be an issue with the outlet in use. Try a different outlet with everything installed. If the noise still occurs, I recommend getting a new computer. With it's age, this is not a "fix-it" situation. Good luck.
 
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Guest

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When I cleaned it and ran it disassembled, I plugged it into a garage outlet. It didn't make any noise. I will try to see if plugging it into a wall outlet helps.
 
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coreymcdonald855

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Feb 27, 2013
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Any luck?
 
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