Laptop sound! How worried should I be

Davoid

In the lecture hall yesterday, my laptop spontaniously made a strange sound

It honestly sounded like an old modem, or that old 56K logon sound

There have been no problems with it prior, and none since

So I backed up everything asap.

It is an HP Pavillion dv6000

Am I awaiting hard drive death here?

DirtyDirtyVagrant

I dont think so. Do you know how to check your event viewer?

Davoid

Nope! I am an idiot

DirtyDirtyVagrant

You're on XP, right?

e: just making sure.

Go to start > control panel (switch to classic view), then hit administrative tools, and go to the event viewer.

The only two logs that probably have anything in them are your applications and system logs. Go to the approximate date and time in the logs and tell us about any errors you see there.

ee: Also I have never seen a hard disk in my life that made a system noise during some kind of failure. Were there no other symptoms?

eee: Actually now that I think about it the short answer is "Probably not worried at all."

But check your event logs anyway.

matt has a problem

Did there happen to be a cell phone near it? Poorly shielded speakers and speaker wiring likes to pick up cellular signals and make awful bleepy screechy noises.

Davoid

The laptop was muted, but it was in the lecture hall, so maybe that might have been it

Nothing big in the event logs

It was totally weird though, it sounded like an old modem signing on

finalflight89

Did it sound like this?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1mlponX_jw

Davoid

Naw, not at all

More like

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDyqctIw0SE

Not as sustained, but those same tones, with a physical grinding sort of undertone

proXimity

Since you say the laptop was on mute (absolutely sure, right?), I'll assume the sound didn't come from the speakers. That really just leaves a mechanical action as to where the sound could have come from- on a laptop, it'd be hard drive, optical drive, or the fan. I would wager to guess that you didn't have a disc in the drive, and if it were a fan having problems, it probably wouldn't make a sound like that. It could very well be the the hard drive, I've on occasion encountered some that make quite odd noises.

That said, good on you for backing up... now you get to play the waiting game to see if the drive does die. If it doesn't make any other noises, and shows no other problems, I wouldn't be too concerned.

Davoid

Yea, absolutely sure, lecture hall, completely muted it.

And yea, no disk, and never encountered a fan sound like that.

No sounds since, but I'll be keeping an ear out.

Klundtasaur

Seconded on the Hard Drive as a possible source of noise. It's rare for a HD to make a really loud screech, but not unheard of (in my 4 years of fixing computers professionally, i've seen it 15-20 times). Almost always means the drive is on it's way out, but it's usually more consistent than once then never again.