I am having a little problem with my pc. I upgraded my system to Core 2 Duo a few weeks ago and was working smoothly until today when suddenly I noticed my pc started making a kind of buzzing sound and froze up for a moment. It has done it several times now. Last time I tried to access some data from one of my HDD's It suddenly made the buzzing again and rebooted. I upgraded my RAM to 2GB's yesterday. Besides that, I haven't changed any other Hardware. Could you please tell what you think could be creating this problem. Thanks.

can you get a fix on where the buzzing is coming from? speakers? drives? power supply?

is it just buzz or is it the zzt-zzzt of something sparking in a bad way. any odd smells coming from the case?

Yeah, the buzzing comes from within the pc. I mean through the sound card like if it were music playing and even the clock stops for a second and returns to normal again. You're right, it's something like a zzt-zzzt sound. There are no odd smells or anything like it. Thanks for replying.

Did you upgrade your motherboard or just the processor. If you changed motherboards I would make sure you don't have an extra metal standoff under the board that is shorting something.

If that's not the case I would next reseat your PCI/AGP/PCI-e cards...blow out the slots with compressed air too.

Is your audio integrated to the motherboard or a separate card?

I upradred both the processor and motherboard. So I had to format and did a fresh install. I am almost sure that nothing is shorting. I guess it must be something related to hardware. I was thinking about IDE cables because the weird sound occurs mostly when trying to access data from one of my 3 HDD's. Not the primary HD but the other two I have as backup drives. I cleaned both the Ram and IDE slots but I think your idea of cleaning all slots would be too. I have onboard sound but it's disabled due to the fact I am using a Sound Blaster 5.1. Do you think It could be something related to CMOS or BIOS?

Check your cables for abnormal kinks, bad connections. Run defrag on all drives whether it says they are fragmented or not. Check for h.d. errors; schedule for during a reboot. Swap ram modules: trade places if you have two, move to different slots if you have 2 modules and 4 slots. Try each piece (assuming you have two) separately in different slots.

I experienced error problems, weird lock-ups and other crap once one of my ram modules went south. It is really noticeable during a fresh install. Since you did move stuff around in your case, replaced the mobo and chip, also check your heatsink/fan and how it is seated. Do you have any rheostats for the fans? Cold cathode lights?

Have you read your mobo manual? Do you have the rig o.c.'ed? Have you disabled any services after the install? Does it happen during just Windows Explorer access of the hard drives or during online browsing, checking of email, running of WinAmp/WMP?

Good luck.

Thanks for replying. I already checked all IDE cables and they seems wrinkled but in an acceptable way but thought about replacing them. I defrag the HDD's on a regular basis. When I cleaned RAM and IDE slots I swapped modules but the problem continues. I don't think it's a cooling problem because I installed another fan and the temp is within normal range. Yes I read the Mobo manual and made sure of everything before moving anything. No I haven't o.c'ed anything. I have only the necessary services running. This problem occurs when trying to access data, it could be during Windows Explorer browsing but last time It happened when I tried to access an Mp3 file that is in another drive through Winamp. Everything froze but FireFox and the mouse pointer.

At the risk of a bad pun, it "sounds" like an IRQ/hardware problem. Do you know where to check for IRQ conflicts? Look there first. <My Computer, Properties, Hardware, Device Manager, System Devices.>
Under system devices check every item for IRQ or memory conflicts. If that isn't it try swapping the sound card out to another PCI slot if open. If not, take out the sound card and try the onboard chip sound. Other than that, wonky ram, possibly.

Thanks Burner. Before I posted this topic I tried everything that came to my mind. Already had checked that IRQ conflict and apparently there's nothing wrong. I will have to change slots to try to see what the problem really is. Something I forgot to mention is that before I even upgradred I noticed sometimes at the startup screen the NVRAM, Prim & Sec Master/Slave checking used to stop and I solved it by moving or slapping gently either the IDE cable or the power cable. That's why I think the problem is origated somewhere around there. Thanks for the help.

You're most welcome. My pleasure. Power supply? Could you be near your limit or the P.S. could be failing?

I am using a 650W PSU and have had no problems so far. So it could be kinda discarded. Since I turned on my pc today, It hasn't done that annoying thing. I am getting to know for sure it's something about the data transfer via cables. Thank you very much for all your help. I really appreciate it.

Je vous en prie et bienvenue.

Gracias por toda la ayuda brindada. Es un placer conocer a personas como vos Burner. Saludos.

You're most welcome.

I fixed the problem. It was a cable problem. I replaced all cables and everything went back to normal. Thank you JTancsi1 and Burner for all your help. I really appreciate it.