Mailing List Archive: [OT] Laptop noises

[OT] Laptop noises

emailgrant at gmail

Sep 30, 2004, 10:14 AM

Post #1 of 7 (898 views)

Does anyone have any tips for reducing the internal noise a laptop
makes? At first I was getting a terrible high pitched sound that
seemed to be related to CPU activity, and I was able to get rid of
that by enabling ACPI in the kernel. Now I'm getting another high
pitched sound that isn't as bad as the first and may be coming from my
hard drive. If I put my ear up to the speaker holes I can hear a
constant crackling even though there is no system activity. Moving my
mouse around in X intensifies the crackling a lot.

I have removed sound support from my kernel and rebooted and I don't
have anything alsa installed. I have tried plugging in headphones and
I don't hear any of the noise in them. Any ideas?

- Grant

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Re: [OT] Laptop noises [ In reply to ]

markknecht at gmail

Sep 30, 2004, 4:11 PM

Post #2 of 7 (888 views)

No problems like this on my laptop. I'm running gentoo-dev-sources.

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Re: [OT] Laptop noises [ In reply to ]

fs2k155 at gmail

Sep 30, 2004, 9:04 PM

Post #3 of 7 (888 views)

I had a similar problem on my Inspiron 8600. I also had similar
problems with a previous laptop that I owned, so figured the problem
was the kernel as it was before. On this system I managed to get it
down to ACPI and specifically the "Processor" option. While it was
compiled into the kernel I had this issue, but as soon as I made it a
module and loaded it after boot everything became quiet again.

I'm running gentoo-dev-sources.

I'd just recommend that you change most kernel options into modules
and load and unload them until you can reproduce the noise. That way
you'll either know what it is or have just the fact that it is running
as a module solve your problem like it did for me.

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Re: [OT] Laptop noises [ In reply to ]

r.g.siebeck at gmail

Oct 1, 2004, 7:05 AM

Post #4 of 7 (886 views)

Hi,

I had the same problem with my laptop, muting the internal microphone
and the modem made the crackling of mouse movements go away.

Robert.

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Re: [OT] Laptop noises [ In reply to ]

emailgrant at gmail

Oct 1, 2004, 9:08 AM

Post #5 of 7 (889 views)

As far as the whining noise, I'd love to be able to fix it with
software but I think this quote from silentpcreview.com describes it
accurately:

-----
The second noise source is generated from the drive's vibration during
idle and seek. This vibration energy is transmitted directly to the PC
chassis structure and causes the chassis to act as a speaker.
-----

The first high-pitched noise problem I had was definitely fixed with
ACPI. I tried removing the hard drive entirely and booting to a
LiveCD and the latest noise disappeared. I have tried tightening all
the easy-to-get-to screws, and it may have helped. I'm considering
opening up the chassis and going after every screw I can find.

> Hi,
>
> I had the same problem with my laptop, muting the internal microphone
> and the modem made the crackling of mouse movements go away.
>
> Robert.

I think I should be able to fix the crackling noises with software.
How did you go about muting your modem and microphone? If I can fix
that it might even help with the other problem.

- Grant

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Re: [OT] Laptop noises [ In reply to ]

r.g.siebeck at gmail

Oct 1, 2004, 9:43 AM

Post #6 of 7 (888 views)

Hi,

> I think I should be able to fix the crackling noises with software.
> How did you go about muting your modem and microphone? If I can fix
> that it might even help with the other problem.

Just use your favourite mixer, like alsamixer or kmix.

Robert.

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Re: [OT] Laptop noises [ In reply to ]

emailgrant at gmail

Oct 1, 2004, 11:44 AM

Post #7 of 7 (887 views)

> Hi,
>
> > I think I should be able to fix the crackling noises with software.
> > How did you go about muting your modem and microphone? If I can fix
> > that it might even help with the other problem.
>
> Just use your favourite mixer, like alsamixer or kmix.
>
> Robert.

I have tried using the xfce4 mixer, and none of the available
adjusters seems to make any difference to this at all. My sound
support is compiled into the kernel. Do you think it's worthwhile to
install alsa to see if it can do better?

- Grant

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