grinding noise

It very easily could be one of your drives (I gather you know it isn't your floppy scanning at boot up...if you aren't sure watch to see if its light comes on when you hear the noise).

I would perform drive maintenance on your Hard drives (virusscan, scandisk, defrag, clear temp files). If it continues after this, I would consider running a more advanced diagnostic software on it. You may need to check with the drive's manufacturer if you don't have something already.

Good luck...hope this helps!

Make sure you have a viable backup before doing much more with this system.

Grinding sounds can come from hdds or from fans.

If you think it's from a hdd, then run a chkdsk /f (or scandsk) or if Win2000, XP check event veiewer and see if you can find any physical problems reported by those.

Also check your power supply. Grinding sounds can come from the fan as well... and then disappear once it has started up.

I vote for one of your fans.

This is the "standard" notification of impending failure for both the power supply and the CPU fan.

With power off and unplugged, hand spin each fan.
The blades should spin smoothly in either direction.
Some fans do have a magnetic cogging effect as they slow down.
If either fan feels "gritty" as you spin it, that is the source of your noise.

A source for rerplacement fans is Hosfelt Electronics.

If it is the power supply fan, you might want to just upgrade to a higher wattage power supply.

Chas

In my experience, the sound is definately your fan. If it was your HD you would noticed more than just the sound at startup by now. If your cmputer is located in a "dirty" environment, or if it is just aging the bushing have a tendency to wear and become loose on the shaft. This causes a vibration that you would interperet as grinding. When the friction causes those bushings to expand the tolerances between metals decrease and the sound is no longer noticable. It could be either your CPU fan oryour Power Supply Fan. My bets would be on the CPU fan given the fact that you placed the location near the Hard Drive and not the back of the case. take the case cover off and turn the PC on after it has sat a while. When the fan starts making the noise you have 15 seconds to put your finger on the cpu fan momentarily to isolate the sound. You can figure out the rest I am sure...

I would also choose one of your fans a your culprit, but want to add my 2cents regarding harddrive diagnostic software.

If your going to use such software it's been my experience to not rely on third party software when checking the fitness of your harddrive. Instead download the drives manufacturers software, Maxtor's = Powermax, Western digital = Data Lifeguard (there are individual components you can download), IBM = Drive Fitness Test & so on.

Thanks for the responses. The reason I though it was my hard drive is that the noise has been going on for sometime before I did a whole lot of hardware upgrades. I switched from a Pentium to an Athlon XP so I also had to change motherboard. I also upgraded my power supply and bought a new hard drive. My old one is now my secondary drive. Since I changed all those things after the noise started I figured it to be that drive. I built a computer for my mom using my old hardware, including all the fans mentioned in the responses, and that computer doesn't make any odd noises.

Well I tried the diagnostic tools for the hard drives and they didn't find any errors. I recently replaced two of the three case fans in my computer. I don't know if those can make the grinding noise but I would guess that they aren't the problem. How can I check if its the power supply or cpu fan causing the noise?

Sorry, I guess answers 2 - 4 already suggested how to check if its the power supply or cpu fan. I'll try their suggestions tomorrow when I have more free time. Thanks for the help so far.

Hi,
Other posibility is that a ribbon cable or power cable touch your CPU fan.

I have the same problem, I found it was my exhaust fan. Once it warms up, its good to go. Nothing to worry about.

Have you considered that it could be your PSU fan. A friend recently complained of a similar problem, but on closer (ear to the computer :-) ) inspection, it turned out to be the PSU cooling fan. The cause.....dust!!!!, the cure a good aerosol dusting and regular dusting around the air inlets.

It was my PSU fan. Thanks for all your help everybody!

I'm going to go ahead and award everybody that still had an open answer the points.

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