Clacking sounds in laptop

Hi, all. I have an HP Pavillion G6 Notebook. It will be 2 years old next month. It is running Win7.

I am hearing horrible :cry clacking sounds from the left side every so often. I am afraid it may be the HD. Does anyone know of a simple, free & easy to use tool to check the actual physical drive (not cleaners)?

Also, there has been an awful lot of dust in my house (tv screens, monitors, etc.). Could excess dust get into my laptop? If so, how would I be able to clean the physical drive?

Also, about a week ago, a little bit of liquid spilled on the keyboard. I wiped it up and blow dried it. This was prior to the clacking noise.

I don't keep it turned on all the time either, but I use it everyday for hours. There is no cooling fan/pad or anything else like that, either.

I am backing up my data, just in case.

Thanks for any help & suggestions.

 

It's most likely something inside the fan grill hitting the fan as it spins, to check download and run prime 95, intel burn test which will make your fans spin faster and hopefully the clacking will speed up then you know for sure.

Visually inspect the fan grills for debris and or disassemble the laptop and clean internally, this would be my recommendation since you've had a spillage but it can be quite an ordeal if you've never disassembled and cleaned one before so plan for at least 2-3 hours work, you can download the service manual from Hp's site to aid disassembly.

To test your hard drive you can simply download speedfan and look at the smart data which will show your relative health of your drive, sandra lite will also show you the smart data on your drive, there are many others such as HD tune but they all do pretty much the same thing.

For a more in depth check go to control panel,device manager, disk drives and find the manufacturer of your drive then download the diagnostic tool from their website, here's a list of a few common ones, use the tool byt the same manufacturer as your drive as it's better tailored to work.

http://pcsupport.about.com/od/toolsofthetrade/tp/tophddiag.htm

 

Another option you have is the ultimate boot CD. This can be found for free here and has testers for all major hard drives (of various ages to suit drive ages) and generic drive testers as well as lots of other tools.

You simply burn the contents of the ISO to a cd/dvd and boot from it.

 

Thanks, Rikki & Collins. I will be trying all your suggestions. One thing I have noticed since my post, is that if I have it plugged in - not on battery power - the clacking noise doesn't happen. It seems to be only when it's on battery alone. If I test the fan by making it run more, won't it hurt the system even more? This will be my first time disassembling a laptop like this one, but I don't have much choice. I have to get the compressed air, and be somewhere away from my animals to do it. So, will probably do that tomorrow, hopefully. But I will try your suggestions for checking the health of my drive tonight.

 

Don't forget to run a Speccy report if you are running the Ultimate Boot Disc. It will show you the make/model of your hard drive, and everything else about your PC you wanted to know, but were afraid to ask. Then, you will know which manufacturer's tests to run.

http://www.majorgeeks.com/Speccy_d6358.html

 

If this only happens when the unplugged then it might be a capacitor between the battery and the motherboard, or it might be the battery itself.

If you are sure this only happens when on battery then a replacement battery or motherboard might be necessary.

IMPORTANT: DO NOT USE the laptop on battery if you are sure this is only happening on battery. This is to avoid the possibility of the battery becoming shorted or otherwise compromised, as this might lead to the battery exploding, although this is very unlikely. But it is better to be safe than sorry.

Take the laptop to a pc repair shop as soon as possible and ask them to check the battery and related circuits.

 

Others will know much more about this than me...but..

A few months ago my notebook started making a clacking noise. It croaked within about a week. Luckily I had a recent full backup because it needed a new hard drive. I had no OS disk as the restoration OS (xp) was located on the HD. In my case it had been indicating some bad sectors on the HD for a couple weeks before it croaked so I pretty much saw it coming.

The new hard drive solved the problem 100%. It didn't bother me too much because I was able to go from an 80gb to a 250gb, which is much nicer.

I would definitely do a full backup now while you can. And probably start shopping for a new or used HD. I found my replacement on ebay. I bought a new one there at a pretty decent price.

Replacing it wasn't to difficult at all because I found several youtube videos explaining what to do for my exact model.

In your case though you would probably want to make sure your spill problem wouldn't harm the next HD.