Motherboard using 'foul language'

[BobNY]

I've spent far too many hours with my head in computer cases. Most of the time I can figure things out. But, recently, I'm truly baffled.

I'm running a now rather old Dell Dimension 8100 that has been tweaked a whole lot. Those details I suspect will not be important. Here's what's going on......... After I power up, perhaps a minute or two later after components warm up, I hear an odd audio beeping signal coming from the motherboard. The sound can 'logically' only be coming from the small sound transducer on the motherboard since there is nothing else that could produce the sound. But, I can't be sure this is the source. This beeping sound is followed by a loud metallic click. The onset of this distinct pair of events is unpredictiable, erratic, and as of this date causes no observable effects. The event occurs whether or not I'm actually running an application. In fact, the sound also occurs if the system is in standby. I've run drive fitness tests on both hard drives and both test out o.k. Also, the sounds are NOT coming from the hard drives. As with most oddities (automobiles are notorious for this), when I actually sit and stare into the case hoping that the sounds will occur so I can isolate the source on the motherboard.........no sound!

I'm wondering if this is a harbinger of a component failure. And no, not yet have I lost my wits about this.

By the way, I disconnected ALL disc drives, CD drives, etc. There is nothing in the box that is mechanical that could produce such a sound except the fans. And, I checked the fans. There's no contact between the blades and the shrouds.

Anyone have any idea what this is all about?

Thanks,
Bob

 

[lamar225]

Well i just had a pc that when it started up and did the ram test it would constantly beep, i removed the cmos batt and gave it 5 min restarted w/o the batt - no beep reinstall the batt and its ok. anythings worth a try

 

[Gloryhound]

Would you describe this as a finger snapping loud click? The only devices on the board that would do that would be capacitors. The warning alarm is likely what your hearing. probably sounds similar to an over heating alarm. That could be cause by a sudden fluctuation in voltage. The result is you have either a faulty Mainboard or Powersupply. That's my best guess. It's hard to interpret someones description of a sound or event unless it is nearly excessive in word content.

 

[ceh4702]

Some power supply fans make a little noise when they quit. Power supplies sometimes collect a lot of dust inside. Some of them are built quite cheap. I have seen speakers make really wierd sounds and even play the radio interference.

If you do not like my post feel free to point out your opinion or my errors.

 

[BobNY]

@Lamar225
The double beeping sound does sound similar to the sound of the CMOS at startup. But, not quite the same. I could put in a new battery. But, I sure don't want to lose the settings by removing the battery. The loud snap however is still a puzzle.

Gloryhound's suggestion of a bad capacitor is a good theory. But, Gloryhound, if there was a bad capacitor, wouldn't there be some observable deficit in function of the system? Heat does have a role in this since the beeping and snapping sound (the sound is more metallic sounding than a finger snap) occurs more frequently above 82 degrees Farhenheit (ambient room temperature). There are 3 fans in the box. 1 fan for the CPU, 1 fan for the power supply, and 1 slot fan for the box interior. I have a drive fitness test utility that would signal overheating of the hard drives. But, I don't know if it also tests for overheating of the interior of the box or the CPU. I have not received any such alert from that utility. I am unfamiliar with your mentioned 'warning alarm' or an 'overheating alarm'. But, these could be the culprits and I will pursue them. Any hints on how to access these utility files or how to test these alarms?

CEH4702, I don't think it is the power supply fan. I've vacummed the unit and the fan is rotating freely. Also, I do not feel any vibration coming from the power supply when the clicking occurs. If the power supply is starting to quit, that would create a fluctuation in power which would cause the capacitors to sound (snapping sound is the sound of discharge?). I can put a multimeter up to the output of the power supply to determine if there is fluctuation. What I don't know is how much is too much fluctuation.

I'm confident that the sound is coming off the mother board. It can't be the speakers since the power to the speakers is turned off and the sound is -endo in nature rather than -exo (that is within the box rather than outside of the box).

Based on all the suggestions, I can start out by adding a fan to cool the motherboard. I've opened the side of the box and I can blow a fan onto the motherboard to see if that eliminates the sound completely. If it doesn't, then I'll next replace the battery. If that doesn't help, I'll check the output of the power supply both with extra fan on the box and without the fan since heat influences stability.

If all these things don't clarify the problem, I'm going to seriously start thinking of a new build project.

Thanks for all the suggestions! Any other ideas are welcome.
Bob

 

[BadFrog]

Here is a good site to check if your capacitors are know bad ones:

http://badcaps.net/

"Once you can accept the universe as matter expanding into nothing that is something, wearing stripes with plaid comes easy"
Albert Einstein

 

[garebo]

I was just going to point out the badcaps website, lol.
Anway, from what i have heard, you can tell a bad cap as the top will be more rounded than flat and sometimes at the bottom of the cap it separates from the motherboard.
You could check for one cap that is further away from the motherboard than others, same with the tops, rounded vs flat. Also, cap noises are more like a whistle i have heard.

About this noise, is it constant above the temp you said, i think it was 82F, is it constant and if not what kind of time intervals?

Do you have a motherboard speaker on your motherboard, some do, some dont. They are usually very small round and black. If so perhaps that is where your sound is coming from?
On the off-chance, maybe it would be smart to go to control panel\sound\sound and make a new sound scheme with no sounds at all, give it a name and save it. That way it will take out any windows sound that the os might make, might help for troubleshooting like this. Wont hurt any and you can change it back later once you find the problem.

Also check your bios and see if there isnt something there needing adjustment. Its just a guess that its a possible cry from your bios, outside chance, but worth a shot.




Good advice + great people = tek-tips

 

[mainegeek]

BobNY,
I would suggest the caps as well except in my experience they usually make a constant high pitch whistling like sqeel when they are split and not a beep.

The sound you are describing sounds more like the hard drive. I had a couple of my own do that over the years and I contributed it to constantly unplugging the molex and data connectors which resulted in loose fitting connector after a while. Probably the pushing and pulling resulted in damage to the PCB on the drive in my instance. Both drives where Maxtor.

 

[garebo]

Anyones first thought would be a drive, but he said in his post that he disconnected ALL drives, optical and data, so we are left with:

possible bad cap(s)
windows os on built-in mobo speaker? - In other words, some program or windows trying to communicate with him, this one is out there, i know.
power supply
fan - he says its not any of the fans.
bios caused? Out there as well, but you never know.




Good advice + great people = tek-tips

 

[garebo]

Well, i came up with another. How about uninstalling and re-installing the sound drivers?


Good advice + great people = tek-tips

 

[BobNY]

I'm back on line.

Here's what I've done
1) Took apart and removed all cables all drives.
2) Vacummed out all dust since temperature seems to be an issue. The lower the temperature the more infrequent the sounds occur. Above 82F, frequency is every few minutes. Below 78F, frequency is very low, perhaps once every 15 min.
3) Replaced CMOS battery
4) Turned off all MS alarms
5) Turned off speaker on motherboard
6) Checked all hard drives using drive fitness utility. All check out o.k.
7) Visually inspected all capacitors. There are no indicates of leakage or rounded tops

Unless there is something else, I'm going to use the the 'hillbilly method', i.e., wait until it stops working!
It's a rather unintellectual and unchallenging option. But, what else? Do I start just replacing parts? That's even dumber.

BTW, I don't think's it's the power supply either. If it was, the fluctuation would be more regular in occurrence.

I am however persistent and will continue to try to resolve this. Any more suggestions are welcome. And, I will continue to contribute to this thread if I discover the solution. Afterall, you could be next to encounter the mysterious beep and click. Oh, I just thought of something else. Maybe this is a new worm/virus. It annoys the user until s(he) turns the damn box off!

 

[BadFrog]

A capacitor can be bad with no visual evidence. The link I posted explains in detail on how to tell if your board has known bad caps. It's worth a read to at least isolate that part of the equation out if you havn't already.

"Once you can accept the universe as matter expanding into nothing that is something, wearing stripes with plaid comes easy"
Albert Einstein

 

[garebo]

I agree, no use tearing pc apart at this point.
However, considering you might have a failure at any time, i would make sure i have my data backed up.
Also, you might want to disable anything that you arent using.
It could be a bad cap that you cant see yet with the eye but that you can only hear. There could be a very small hole that cant be seen.
Interesting point you make about when the sound comes. Becuse of that i would also suggest you take the cpu\hs\fan assembly out, clean it very well, take old thermal paste or thermal pad off with isoprophl alcohol and then put small amount of thermal paste on the part of the cpu that will mesh with the heatsink and put it all back together, see if that helps any.
After the above, unless someone else comes up with another plan, then its sit and wait, or rather run the pc and wait.

Good advice + great people = tek-tips

 

[BobNY]

As Stuart Mill the great philosopher once said, parsimony is quite often the solution to apparently complex events.

In this case, the 'hillbilly technique' was successful. But, the outcome was not desirable. It was the hard drive after all. How do I know? Well, I tried to boot up to D2 (I have a drive selector system that runs each of 2 drives independently mechanically and electronically. Each drive has it's own OS). The OS would not load on drive 2. I ran the drive fitness test again on the drive and this time, it started identifying bad sectors. The DFT would have repaired the drive by marking those sectors bad and not using them. But, I suspect that most of the data would be lost under such circumstances. So, I chose to not proceed with the elimination of the bad sectors.

The iron clad test: I Booted back up to drive 1 (the good drive) and unplugged power from drive 2 (the bad drive). No more beeping or clicking. I actually should have done this initially but I was so damn scared the test would have indicated something wrong with the drive which would have meant 'data loss' that I was in denial. One other thing. And, I swear, the sound did NOT sound like it was coming from the hard drive!

Heat seemed to be a consistent variable that was relevant in tracking down the clicking sound. I took a temperature reading of the surface of Drive 2. It was much hotter than the surface temperature of drive 1. My guess is that the beeping and clicking sound was a signal that the drive was overheating and on its way to failure. But, the utility on the hard drive never gave me the alert. Another reason to NOT buy an IBM drive.

That's it guys. Thank you all for your help and suggestions.

My next step: It's off to buy a new hard drive and perhaps have a data recovery service save the data on my now trashed IBM drive. Things could have been much worse.

Later,
Bob

 

[BadFrog]

By the way, I disconnected ALL disc drives, CD drives, etc.

Glad you found it.

"Once you can accept the universe as matter expanding into nothing that is something, wearing stripes with plaid comes easy"
Albert Einstein

 

[garebo]

BobNY, you stated : "By the way, I disconnected ALL disc drives, CD drives, etc." And, of course, thats why we were all looking in directions away from your hard drive as that would have been the first suspect.

But, hey, this stuff happens, not a big deal.

However, with your statement above about the temperature situation, i would still advise you do the re-sealing of your cpu as advised above.

Let us know if the temp issues persist. Glad you found the culprit!








Good advice + great people = tek-tips

 

[BobNY]

@Garebo
Again, I apologize for the misinformation. This experience puts me in my place. I'm gonna go out and buy a stethoscope to better target sound sources!

Anyway, your suggestion regarding the caps is a good one and I'll followthrough just to minimize another disaster. But, I have lost confidence in this computer. It is now 4 years old. And, I'm just looking for trouble if I just expect it to run without a total failure event.

I was planning to eventually build a new system. This event just speeds up the start date. I think it's time to plan its retirement.

 

[garebo]

What is was referring to was re-sealing the cpu with new thermal grease. And of course that means you clean the fan and heatsink off while doing the re-sealing of the cpu.



Good advice + great people = tek-tips

 

[BobNY]

Oh, I get you. Sure, that's a good idea. Less heat produced at the juncture of the motherboard and CPU.