z1sp fan noise episode II

[paradoxchild]

hello, not too long ago i posted the following

http://www.club-vaio.com/clubvaio/mvnforum/viewthread?thread=32540

and was advised to get some compressed air and clean my laptop's vents.

i was all set to do this when the noise suddenly stopped and, being not the most confident with technical things, i decided to leave well alone.

a mistake. yesterday, after months of no noise, during a virus scan the noise returned, only much worse! i know that virus scans are processor intensive, but the noise was so loud that i cancelled the scan and shut my vaio down. i have not dare turn it on since!

so, i am now going to try the compressed air , but i am a little unsure what you do? sorry if its a silly question.

on the underneath of my vaio are 3 vents, the top left one appears to have the fan ..am i ment to spray the air into those holes or should i remove the underneath itself?

i just thought that blowing dust in such a confined space will just blow it somewhere else, rather than out.

its not under warrenty anymore so i'd like to try all that i can before having to spend lots on having sony do it.

thanks

jj (again)
ps apologies for not doing the compressed air before

[kee-lo_]

Scrolling in ITunes makes my CPU fly to 100%

[paradoxchild]

well, i downloaded a disk fitness test from hitachi for my hdd which requires a bootable cd. i followed instructions to make the bootable cd, put it in, restarted .......and got to the black screen with the flashing _ and expected it to boot and the disk test prog to run. then i went away from the keyboard and after about 3-5 mins, i heard the noise, rushed over and it was still on the black screen with the _.

so not only did it boot, but the noise surfaced before the system had even bbooted fully. there was no hdd light flickering during the noise, and it wasnt the cd spinning as when i opened the tray , the noise remained. it even stayed for a second or so after i turned it off.

surely the fan or disk wouldn't be being thrashed at the black screen?

[Thalamus.]

Hi paradoxchild

I think it may be wise to have your Vaio looked at by a IT professional, you could either contact Vaio-Link or take it to somebody local...

[kee-lo_]

Sounds to me like it was waiting for something - an instruction from the CD.

As Thalamus said you should have it fixed professionally.

[paradoxchild]

oh dear, that sounds expensive

with it being out of warranty, would i be paying through the nose by using sony for repairs? also, what do you suggest i do with my hdd in terms of privacy if i take / send it somewhere? i use it for banking and letters etc as well as general use.

would a system restore suffice? i know data can be recovered still though? or am i being paranoid????

[kee-lo_]

Yeah Sony will be expensive.

Have a look on yell.co.uk - ask for quotes and see what's best.

As for data privacy there's tools like BCWipe which overwrite the area of where the file was 20x

[paradoxchild]

ok thanks, i'll look into bcwipe. i had a look on yell, found a few but most seem to be more desktop oriented. if only there was a sudden price drop on vaios in time for christmas...

i might try adding a new fan or hdd myself if i'm not that confident in these companies to see if it solves it.

oo the indecision! i'll let you know though.

[kee-lo_]

Paradox,

I know I'm going to get shot for saying this, but there's some nice deals on Toshiba laptops

[paradoxchild]

haha ..i dont feel so bad about looking now.

yeh they do make some nice ones. i saw the new c series vaios yesterday though, they seem pretty good.

however, i am 'trying' to talk myself out of buying a new notebook.how long this will last i don't know. i have had the nootebook 3.5 years, which probably isn't very long is it.

anyway, i have just been looking at 2.5" hdds to see how much they are etc if i was to have a go.

the hdd in my z1sp currently is an Hitachi Travelstar DK23EA, 60gb. its rpm is 4200 and interface is listed as being ATA-5...does this mean any replacement drive also has to have an rpm of 4200 and an interface of ATA-5?

I keep seeing far higher rpm and interfaces such as ATA-100..

[jammold]

ATA-100 I believe is the ATA-5 standard, it means a theoretical transfer rate of 100MB per second, in Ultra-DMA mode.

ATA-133 is the ATA-6 Standard, reaching a transfer rate of 133MB per second, in Ultra-DMA mode.

Correct me if I'm wrong...