funny clicking/solenoid noise :(

[kieranv]

My computer is dying, it started making this noise around the end of summer and i put it down to the psu, so i replaced it and all was well for a few weeks. But it has started doing it again .

Basically, theres a noise just before your computer turns off completely after you shut it down, kinda like a click. My computer takes it upon itself to randomly make this noise repeatedly around 20 times in a few seconds then completely die and tell me something about selecting a proper boot device or something. Sounds like a solenoid.

Anyone got any reasons as to what it could be?

cheers
Kieran

 

[jak731]

could it be your HDD?

 

[Werewolf]

yup, one of the hard drives is the most likely culprit.
There are only a handful of moving parts in the PC, and only two have a tendency to start going "clunk", hard drives (most common as they have metal read/write heads) and optical drives (which tend to have plastic parts, which can click/clunk but don't sound as metallic).
The message about a boot device is the real tell though.

Run the drive manufacturers test utilities on the hard drives, and possibly look in the windows control panel under event viewer/system for drive messages (windows XP will log drive errors quite happily without telling you).

[edit]
And backup any important data ASAP to CD/DVD/flash memory.