[jeonatl3]

Hi

I've just bought a refub Inspiron mini 9 from eBay for a great price - it's the 8Gb XP version with 1Gb of memory. Anyway it arrived and it's been fantastic, got a 2Gb RAM module coming in a few days time which will hopefully give it a bit of a boost, and I will consider upgrading the SSD drive in the future when I can afford it(!).

I only have one minor question, from time to time, my mini is making a strange buzzing sound. It's hard to explain what it sounds like, sort of like a "dum-dum-dum" but in a low pitched rattle/clunk/buzz way. It happens every few minutes, sort of 10-15 minutes or so. Then it goes quiet. Until the next time! It's not faint, not loud either but certainly noticable in a quiet-ish room. It seems to be coming from the left hand side of the machine, near the front.

It's not something loose as far as I can tell, because I can pick it up and shake it in every direction without being able to replicate the noise, it goes silent until it happens again, seemingly randomly!

It happens when plugged in and when on battery, when the screen brightness is at full, minimal and in between, when the volume is on and muted, when I am actively using it, and when it's sitting idle (although it doesn't happen in standby), when Wlan is on and off, it just seems somewhat random.

I had a look under the cover but everything that I could immediately get to was firmly in its place, including the unused antennae connectors for the WWAN card which were stuck down with some sellotape.

It doesn't seem to be causing any problems but I was wondering if anyone else had experienced this, and if so, how to fix it without taking it apart!

Thanks :-)
j

[jacques1171]

I have the same sound on my Dell Mini 9 I bought it new it's about 6 months old it seems to be cumming from the wireless card if I turn it off the sound goes away.

[safemode]

It's likely a bad cap that is resonating on the wifi card. Harmless usually, though annoying.

[jeonatl3]

Thanks for replying, yes hopefully it's harmless enough. It's not especially annoying, like with most things of this sort it's more annoying not knowing where it's coming from!

[jeonatl3]

Just thought I'd update this... for some reason the mini 9 does not make this noise in Mac OS X... I installed it a few days ago and have been using it fairly heavily and the noise has disppeared! It could be coincidence, but I haven't had the back cover off to move anything around, weird eh?

[Furton]

I have the same issue with my Mini9. Is it worth sending it back to Dell for a replacement?