Laptop noise/power issue

[hawkeye_wx]

I have a 10-year-old HP laptop. A few months ago, I began to hear a noise. I would describe it as a scratchy, staticky, whisper. For quite a while I assumed it was the hard drive. The drive is also going bad and causing problems, so that made sense. However, recently, clues have turned my attention elsewhere. I've learned that the noise is coming from the top, middle part of the laptop and involves the power system. When the laptop is plugged in, the noise is there. Sometimes the noise even continues after I've put the system to sleep or shut it down. Last night the noise was there after shutting down and did not stop. When I unplugged the cord, it stopped. When I plugged it back in, the noise returned. One other thing I noticed last night is, when the system is on and I'm in Windows, when the cpu is active the noise diminishes or even goes away completely. When the cpu is idle, the noise returns. One other thing... for years I've usually just put my laptop to sleep overnight rather than shut it down. Now, sometimes the system will suddenly wake up from sleep(and wake me up because of the loud cpu fan) or shut down by itself in the middle of the night.

Is there something I can do about this or should I just assume a capacitor or some other power-related component is going to die at any time? I was planning to purchase a small-capacity ssd to replace the failing hard drive in an attempt to keep this system going for another year. Now I'm not sure that will be worth it if the system is going to die. While the noise is a bit annoying, I can live with it if the system works.

 

[rhansen5_99]

Sounds like some kind of electrical whine, maybe in the charge or ac to dc conversion. Honestly if you are talking about a 10 year old laptop might not be worth fixing, but you could always tear it down and blow out the fans, re do the thermal paste and swap out the hdd for the ssd. You might get your desired effect. Alternately, if it is the charge circuitry you might luck out and it be a separate board from the motherboard and could potentially find a cheap part off something like ebay.