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"Ccccrrrrraaaaaaaaaaaannnng - wocka - wocka - wocka-cccrrrrraaaaaaaaaaaannnng - wocka - wocka - wocka."
Truth be told, I barely even registered it. I'm just kinda used to the noise. But my significant other (we just moved in together a few weeks ago), is not. Accordingly, she gave me a befuddled, somewhat panicked look. She's well aware that my income is reliant on that mass of beeping - LED flashing equipment in the corner nook of the living room.
I just shrugged it off. "Ehh, it's just some dust on one of the cooling fans, throwing it out of whack. It'll shake loose in a moment and quiet down."
Wrong answer. While the fan did "shake it loose" momentarily, she was not impressed with the answer as a whole, and gave me one of those "Fix it or its the couch for you tonight" looks.
That look got more and more stern, as the movie was interupted twice more. My best "What me?" (*blink-blink*) innocent look didn't help.
So after the movie I went digging through my "big box of random computer related stuff" and dug out my specially modified crevice attachment for the vacuum. It consists of a regular crevice attachment, with a foot of small flexibile tubing (the kind you attach to an airator pump in an aquarium)jammed into the end, with the rest of the opening duct-taped off. This gives you a finely controllable nozzle that can get just about anywhere in the guts of a computer, and greatly increases the suction at the same time.
Opening up the case (after shutting the computer off first, natch) revealed some serious dust bunnies, and I went to work giving the insides a good cleaning, paying special attention to the fan mounted right on top of the CPU (the offending fan that had begun the whole process). I spent about 20 minutes vacuuming out the innards, doing a very thorough (and carefull) job of it, before putting the case back on and firing it up again.
And there hasn't been a peep out of the fan since. As a side bonus, it reminded me why I made the attachment in the first place. Dust buildup around the CPU, the cooling fins, and the fan, can cause a lot of heat to get trapped, and as we all remember from "Computers for idiots 101" - heat + CPU = BAD. Also, dust can create "micro-arc-points" for static, again, something you don't want going on inside your computer.
Since the cleaning, this particular machine has been running much faster and more error free in general.
Just thought I'd pass this along here, for anyone who might be interested.
A couple of things to keep n mind. ALWAYS ground yourself, and anything else that might touch an internal component of your computer. Micro-arcing can fry a CPU, graphics card, and many-many other things faster than you can say ZAP! Personally, I like to tape a thin wire to my pinky-finger, and tape the other end to an unpainted portion of the case (after its been removed from the rest of the CPU). This works pretty good.
Be careful where you stick your custom-made crevice attachment. Its easy to knock loose wires, or physically damage other sensitive parts of the computer.
If you have a basic understanding of the internal components of your computer, and are careful, you should be able to do this yourself, and its a surprisingly effective way of extending the life of a computer. If you don't feel comfortable doing it yourself, its not a bad idea to take it into just about any computer service center once or twice a year. They all have the equipment (usually a little more sophisticated than my custom-crevice-attachment) to do this. I have a friend who's the chief technician at a lumber mill that's very highly automated, and he goes over their PCs every couple of months. It all depends on how dusty an environment you're working in.
