Mac OS X Randomly freezes and starts making high pitched noise

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doggfather

Registered
Hi Guys,

Hope somebody can help with this. I must admit i know next to nothing about Macs having always only had PCs. My girlfriend has a Mac Os X laptop and it recently has started randomly freezing up and then it starts making a high pitched noise, which is really quite annoying.

This can happen at anytime. On start up, browsing with Safari, burning CDs, practically anything. Sometimes it will start making the high pitched noise before it freezes. But it will eventually freeze. The only way to get the computer back is to power it down.

I have Googled the problem but it seems no forum post quite hits the spot with my problem.
 
no it more sounds like its an alien noise trying to blow up your brain.

to me it doesnt sound like a fan. the sound is literally one of the most offensive things i have heard and if you dont power down the computer in a short amount of time it feels like ill get a brain bleed.

sorry its not more technical but thats the best way to describe it.

ive put my ear on the computer and it seems the noise is coming from the right hand side near the power button/cd drive.

thanks for the reply :)
 
Probably the hard drive.
The quick-n-easy test is to boot while holding command and S
You'll get a screen with text scrolling down.
type fsck -fy then press enter. That will show several lines that may tell you the tale (and show possible errors)
Type "reboot", or "exit" (without the quotes) to restart the Macbook.
What's the result?
 
Could very well be the right side fan blades hitting the fan enclosure or perhaps the fan bearings themselves. There is an app called fanspeed that you can manually increase/decrease the speeds of the fans. Try it and see if it makes the more or less noise in changing the speeds. This is not a recommended fix, just something to see if one of the fans is causing the issue.
 
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