My computer was freezing quite frequently over the past week, so I figured that it might have been an overheating issue, since my computer was quite poorly ventilated, I never really take the time to keep it clean and a lot of dust accumulates in my house for some reason.

So I took off the side and front panels, it was filthy of course, cleaned it out with compressed air, I thought I was being relatively delicate with it, then again I have a tendency to accidently rough things up, (**** ogre hands!) Put the panels back on, hooked everything back up, tried to turn it on...

Immediately a buzzing/humming sound occurs, the lights on the front of the computer flash on/off for 10-15 seconds, lights shut off, noise stops. About 10 seconds later it'll repeat.

Any ideas what the problem could be? My E-mail is **removed** , I would appreciate any insight offered by someone much more skilled with computers then me, (which isn't that hard to be.)

-DN

Hello Darkness_Named, welcome to PCHF.

I've removed your e-mail link before you start receiving an influx of SPAM.

Can you describe this buzzing sound you here, is it electrical or mechanical, and can you find out where onboard it is coming from? Also, when you say rough things up? These boards are quite sensative to static electricity so if you were purposely touching these components with your hands, it's really not a good idea. Finally, what is the make and model of the PC (will most likely help later on).

It's a relatively loud buzzing, if you touch the front of the tower you can barely feel a vibration, so I'm going to assume mechanical? It sounds like it's coming from one of the CD drives or the Hard Drive.

The rough comment was just referring to my lack of gentleness, but I know about the static electricity thing, I didn't touch any of the boards inside the computer, just the inside of the metal case, I figured that'd discharge any static electricity. Then I used a can of compressed air to blow out the dust.

Erm... as for the make/model... *cough* it's a Dell Dimension 2350 Intel Celeron Processor. I'm planning on putting together a new computer in the future, but for now this is how I do research for school and whatnot.

Sorry I didn't include this information before, I should have been more descriptive.

lol, I know what you mean.

OK, one more question before we continue. When you switch your PC on, does anything appear on the screen before it shuts off again? I'm guess not, but just to be sure.

I just tried to turn it on again, and it didn't shut itself off this time, but still nothing showing on the screen. Just kept making that noise, lights on the tower stayed on, no other activity I could see.

The only difference between today and yesterday is today it stayed on, or powered, or whatever you want to call what it's doing, and yesterday the noise would start and the lights would turn on, for about 10 seconds, then they'd turn off for about 10 seconds, and so on and so forth.

Ok, if it turns and stays on, and u just cant see the monitor (this has happened to me) It might be the monitor input slot on the mohterboard. You might be able to replace it, or just might have to get a new motherboard.. someone correct me if im wrong, but its not that serious. When you start it up, does it make the cooling fan noise, then instantly turn off, then come back on, and continuous restart.

Thanks,
-Jay

I found out the humming noise was coming from the floppy drive, which is pretty worthless to me anyways so I just disconnected it.

I feel so stupid, it didn't dawn on me to try plugging the monitor into the motherboard slot, I forgot to mention I'm using a different video card. Anyways, I plugged it into the motherboard slot and it started working again, so... my computer DOES work...

But... I think I have a bad virus problem or something, it froze again, (freezing was my initial problem.) and now Windows won't start up... it'll start loading, then freezes again. Argh!

But at least I found out that the computer isn't completely trashed, I guess.