PC making chirping noise (and then some)

**ryanbatc** · 08-05-08, 04:40 PM

For about 2 weeks now my wife's Dell Dimension 2400 (P4 old school, bought in early 2003) has been making this annoying chirping sound. I thought it was a fan, but I got up close and could not hear anything abnormal from the fans. I think it's either an optical drive or the HDD.

We powered it up this morning and some sort of diagnostic screen came up saying something about two of the drives. (Now that I think about it it may have been the optical drives). She has two: a CD-ROM drive and a new DVD burner I installed a while ago (it has worked perfectly) I didn't think much of the message and it kept booting right to Windows XP...

Well, I put a CDR in because I wanted to back some stuff up (having bad feelings about the pc in general), but the computer will not recognize the CDR, let alone the drive. In fact it doesn't recognize any of the optical drives!

So I went into BIOS and sure enough, Unknown Device for both of them

I will shake around the cabling and stuff, but I wanted to post this first....

Here's the pic of the bios, does it look like the optical drives aren't there or what?

[img width=700 height=467]http://i141.photobucket.com/albums/r43/ryanbatc/dellbios.jpg[/img]

**Mojo** · 08-05-08, 05:08 PM

To lose both secondary IDE devices, seems like the IDE controller went haywire.
Probably won't be long until it loses your hard drive as well.
Mobo replacement, first guess.
Odds that both cd/dvd drives failing at same time is astronomical.

**SapiensErus** · 08-05-08, 11:37 PM

Originally Posted by Mojo

To lose both secondary IDE devices, seems like the IDE controller went haywire.
Probably won't be long until it loses your hard drive as well.
Mobo replacement, first guess.
Odds that both cd/dvd drives failing at same time is astronomical.

I concur.

But, a failing IDE controller would not chirp. An old drive might chirp. it is possible that a failing drive shorted the IDE controller. I had a bad USB mouse short the USB controller on an old laptop and I lost all USB. It can happen...

I would see if re-tightening the wires helps... if not... time for a new Mobo?

Do you have another computer you could throw those optical drives in to see if they work? (Considering though that a failing drive may have shorted the IDE controller this troubleshooting technique might be risky).

That's all I got now, good luck

**WileECyte** · 08-06-08, 09:07 AM

Don't rush to guess the Mobo/IDE controller is bad. When you use cable select mode for IDE drives, if one drive fails, both drives become unavailable. Another possibility is the IDE cable went bad. I'd try a couple things

1) Replace the IDE ribbon cable
2) Try each drive individually and see if one shows up but not the other.

If either of these don't find the source of failure, it's likely the motherboard.

**Menoske** · 08-06-08, 09:16 AM

The chirping sounds you mention remind me of a failing optical drive, where a mechanical piece is slightly rubbing against another during operation and boot-up calibrations.

having a faulty drive and both being CS can cause the BIOS display you showed earlier. The first time i encountered this was 2 HDDs and i was pissed (mainly cuz the customer was expecting it in the next 10 minutes) but i figured it out by unhooking each HDD from the IDE at a time. The fact that your bios is showing a connection to 2 drives makes me think that your IDE cable is still good, so my reasoning would say that one of your optical drives has failed, messing up the other in your BIOS.

**WileECyte** · 08-06-08, 09:21 AM

If one of the wires gets pinched in a ribbon cable, especially the 80 wire EIDE cables, it can still show as being connected in BIOS. In this case, the communication may be one-way or hampered so that the BIOS can't determine what type of device is attached, even though it knows something is attached.