Crash and Burn

Q: I have an IBM ThinkPad type1107. It has Windows ME on it. Recently, my laptop started making a grinding sound when it was started. The next thing I know my computer was crashing all of the time. I have tried uninstalling Windows Me and reinstalling it, but the problem continues and it may even have gotten worse. How can I fix this?
Allan S.
A: Grinding is never the sound that you want to hear from your computer. I can tell you that if you hear a grinding sound from your computer, then your operating system is not the problem. A grinding sound means that there are moving parts within your computer that are touching, but were probably not designed to be touching each other. There are only a few components within your computer that actually have parts that move. Among them are the floppy drive, CD/DVD drives, fans that cool the inside of the computer and the CPU, and your hard drive. Considering that there is an finite number items inside of your computer that move this makes narrowing down the culprit that much easier. In my experience, the hard drive is normally the problem when events occur that are similar as you have described. Most hard drives make some degree of sound or noise. Hard drives are a series of platters upon which your information is saved. At the risk of dating myself, think of hard drives as a few 45 or LP records stack on top of each other in a metal case. For those that are slightly younger, replace the LP records with CD’s or DVD’s.
You may need to replace your hard drive. Replacing hard drives in ThinkPads are normally easier than replacing hard drives in a desktop. The first thing to do is to make sure that the computer is turned off. Next, look at the underside of the laptop. You should see an oversize screw called a coin screw; it is designed to be unscrewed with a coin. On your particular computer it should be located in the lower right of underside of the computer. Once this screw is removed, you can remove the hard drive cover located to the right of the screw. The hard drive should be in a metal carriage that has a string attached so that you can remove the hard drive. You can determine the specific type of hard drive that you need by looking on the topside of the hard drive. Another way to find out what type of hard drive that you will need is to go to IBM’s website and find out which hard drives are compatible with your computer. A used hard drive can start out at about $10-$30 for 5 gigabytes. A new hard drive can start out at roughly $125. After you have reinstalled the hard drive you will still need to reinstall the operating system, and partition the hard drive depending on the size of the hard drive.