Pavillion dv7--Whirring Noise at Start Up

[avrille]

Recently I've been hearing a whurr-whurrr-whurr noise coming from the front-left of my Pavillion dv7 notebook at Start up. 

It's not a happy sound.  Should I be as worried as I am?

And, of course, my warranty has just ended at the beginning of the month...  :- (

[DavidPK]

Hi,

It may be a good idea to rule out any problem with the Hard Drive.

To do this, tap away at f10 as you start the notebook to enter the bios menu.  Under the Advanced or Diagnostic tab you should find the facility to run a test on the Hard Drive.  Run this and post back with the results.

Best wishes,

DP-K

[avrille]

OK...  I started up, hit f10, ran the long checks on main and secondary HDs.  All "passed." 

Not sure if it was related, but Windows 7 didn't boot up afterwards... It went to a solid black screen with some light.  I manually shut down with power button.  Then it started up and there was black screen--no light at all.  Shut off again by hitting Power Button.  Third time it booted up OK...  ??!!!

Good thing:  I didn't hear loud whirring sounds...!

[avrille]

Booted up this morning .  windows launched with no problem.

BUT... WHIRRING sound is back.  :-(

[Peterjh]

I had this happen to my 2003 hp laptop.  it was the hard drive and it eventually died.  there was nothing i could do other than replace it... i would recommend backing up your computer regularly on a portable drive/cloud.  it took my computer 1-2 month's to die after it started whirring...  sorry i couldn't really help just thought i would tell you my experience with that problem.  

Peter

[avrille]

Dying  HD is certainly what I fear...

I'm disappointed with HP.  This is my first, and it is just a year old and hardly used... !  :-(

[avrille]

Any other ideas? 

Or do I just sit and wait for my HD to die???

[topmahof]

Well, I guess you'll need to source a new hard drive.  Then you'll probably need a set of restore discs. If the drive doesn't fail before you get discs you can clone your old drive to the new drive.  If it fails, you'll need restore discs.

[limb2011]

Hi, I too have had this "whirring" sound, I turn my dv7 on after it's it's been off all night and the whirring sound happenes, then the key board lights come on, it sounds like it's on, however I have no screen or the "black screen" as some are calling it. After holding the power button to shut down and retry, if it fails a 2nd time I remove the battery, then using just the power cord it usually will turn on and boot up properly. My dv7 has been doing this on and off a few times beginning a month or so after I purchased it at bestbuy 8 months ago. I have done extensive research  and read so many places about design flaws of the dv7 very flimsy and weak structured lids and casing, over heating, key popping off, to name a few. Mainly, issues regarding power, power supplies, batteries, and motherboards. I believe the "whirring" sound in my case is the fan. I'm not sure why the fan would come on since it hasn't even had time to warm up, let alone heat up, but if the "power issues" are causing interruptions and/or surges with in the laptop, this may be why my fan turns on when I turn the notebook on. Power issues can cause all kinds of instability to many other areas of the notebook as I've learned these "power interruptions/surges" may have caused my lcd screen to crack before my very eyes. I see so many of these same similar issues HP notebook customers are having. I'm saddened by this company who used to be near the top of this industry, and now the build quality as well as stamina of their products has caused a lot of customers tremendous frustration. People simply cannot afford to spend 800-1000 dollars a year on a pc. I can't, I wouldn't if I could. (I'm saving now for a falconNorthwest).  I still have a HP dv5000 that I purchased in 2006, other than a fax modem issue that I had to figure out myself and fixed, it has proved to be the best laptop and is still functioning perfectly today. The HP dv4000 laptop I purchased in 2005 is also still functioning perfectly today (it went to my sister, wanted a bigger screen). I only had to call HP service once (for the fax modem issue) in the last 6 years....they were not helpful regarding the faxmoden and they were rude, so I researched and fixed it on my own). I recently had to cantact them with my dv7 lcd screen that cracked right in front of me... I will certainly let people know how this incident turns out. The forum here and so many other places on the web is flooded with HP issues. Of course, no company is likely to do "recalls" of prooducts or admit to serious design/manufacturing flaws easily, certainly not when they are amidst declining in many areas.