intertwingly

Yesterday, an Aptiva that I bought for the kids started to make a rather ominous sound.  Kinda like the sound a car with a low battery that won't start would make, but a bit slower.

My first suspicions were the hard drive.  Hard drives are cheap, but re-installing Windows is no fun.

So with great trepidation I opened the case.  I hadn't been in there a while, so I wasn't sure what I would find.  I took inventory:

Two hard drives.  One floppy.  One CDROM.  It didn't seem likely that it was the last two, so I figured it was one of the hard drives.  That would mean a 50/50 chance it was the one that the OS was on.

At this point, I use a rather low tech diagnosis technique.  I maneuvered to where I could place my ear next to the fully powered and operational hard drives.

The sound wasn't coming from there.  Inches away was a fan over the CPU.  That seemed to be the source.

I stuck my finger into the fan, stopping the motion.  The sound stopped.  I took my finger out.  The sound resumed.  I stuck my finger in one more time and looked around for anything amiss.  I didn't see anything.

I took my finger out and turned off the machine.  Unplugged it too, for safety.  I then retrieved the vacuum cleaner.  Positioned the hose right over the fan and turned it on.  Did you know that those puppies make a rather high pitched sound when you get the RPMs high enough?  Well, they do.

Once I was done, I plugged the machine back in and turned it on.  The sound was gone.

It hasn't come back yet today.