Dell Latitude E6400 - loud cracking noise!

Hi,

Bought a latitude E6400 a few weeks ago. Every now and again a loud cracking noise can be heard somewhere around the left side of the keyboard. This happens very infrrequently, about 10 times since I have had it.

Before I ring Dell has anyone come across this before?

The noise is like a crack and then a smaller click Sounds like a small peice of plastic just broke or something.

The laptop could be sitting there doing nothing for 20 mins and then the noise happens.

Thanks

 

I have 3 of the E6400 now in my company and non have this noise.
Have you tried removing and replacing the keyboard?
I did have a problem with mine poping up in the right corner (had this on a Lenovo as well). When i removed it there was a wire on top of the metal and not in its track. once i placed it in the track the problem was gone.

 

Hi, no I havn't tried doing anything to the laptop, I dont think I will in case it invalidates the warranty.

What could the noise be? I dont think it is the fan as the fan works fine, what other moving part could do it?

It sounds like it is coming from underneath the left side of the keyboard somewhere or maybe middle front.

 

I think I've also had that noise. It should be coming from the HDD, but that's probably nothing to worry about. Maybe it's just HDD parking the head quickly.

 

Well then it must be as good as parking as some people I know, crashing and banging into things. Very loud!

 

The HDD is under the left palm rest and it is screwed directly to the chassis, so noise does propagate.

Which make / model of HDD is it? some do make various clicks and clunks.

John

 

My E6400 make a crackling noise if I lift it up a little bit (a few centimeters) at the front and drop it back to the table. I think it might be the hard drive parking its heads. I have the 7200 RPM drive with free fall sensor (160 GB Hitachi 7K320).

My Hitachi hard drive in my old laptop sometimes emit really strange squeaking noises and this has been going on since I bought the hard drive over a year ago. I haven't noticed any problem related to the noise.

Of course your noise can be the first sign of a hard drive failure. Run a SMART test on the hard drive to see if it shows any problems.

Örjan

 

Its a 160GB SATA 5400 rpm.

Is a SMART test a program I need to run?

Thanks

 

From wikipedia: "Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology, or S.M.A.R.T. (sometimes written SMART), is a monitoring system for computer hard disks to detect and report on various indicators of reliability, in the hope of anticipating failures."

When you run a SMART test you run a program that accesses health information about a drive that the SMART system has stored in the drive itself. It can give information whether the drive is bad or not.

While you are at it, why not run a full drive test. Download Western Digital Data Lifeguard Diagnostics for Windows and run SMART test and the full disk test.
Download link: http://support.wdc.com/download/windlg/WinDLG.zip

Örjan