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General discussion

T6212 HDD Access Light Always On

May 2, 2005 5:13AM PDT

I purchased this system at Best Buy on Saturday (4-30-05) and spent yesterday setting it up. The system backup (done on 4 CD's) went pretty well; it got hung up on the second CD, so I had to substitute a new one and it went fine from there.

Anyway, my hard drive access light is ALWAYS flashing; I can hear a constant noise inside the tower, almost akin to a respirator going on and off, a click and then a whirring sound...I hope that doesn't prove to be a sadly prophetic analogy (haha).

Is that normal? I've never seen it on any other PC I've used.

Discussion is locked

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Light On
May 2, 2005 8:44AM PDT

There is noting unusual about clicks, whirrings, lights on and respiratory noises, but they should not be incessant. My principal activity is always when I boot, but other factors, such as sceduled tasks, e-mail notification, instant messaging, etc. all contribute. I would try a period of inactivity to see if it settles down, otherwise there might be a driver conflict.

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I have this machine...
May 3, 2005 1:46AM PDT

...and I noticed the noise as well. The fan seems to run incessantly and it is the nosiest PC I've owned to date.

My hard drive light flashes during activity, however. I think it's OK. There are some quirky things though.

1. Internet Explorer has crashed 3 or 4 times with multiple windows open (of course this happened at work as well. Who knows what THAT is).
2. Creative SB Live! Diagnostic says that the hardware failed. The diagnostic is not seeing the sound card I added! (It works however and is listed in Device Manager).
3. Testing the sound card speakers sometimes causes a loud mechanical Phhhbbbttting and other times produces a normal, accurate test.
4. The system crashed & rebooted last night as the result of one of the IE windows "Needing to close."
5. I've added 2 1GB sticks of 3200 DDR (Rosewill), ABit 256 MHz PCI-xpress graphics card and Creative SB Live! digital 5.1 sound card.

Any suggestions?