Im having a very faint but noticeable electric-like buzzing/grinding. It is not the hard drive but sounds very similar.

It occurs when i move scroll bars, or drag windows. It is highly replicable.

The only other time this has happens is when i install KDE which resulted in me reinstalling. Something id prefer to avoid. I havent installed KDE this time, but this seems to have started immediately after replacing my fstab file which i accedently deleted. That's the only thing i can think of.

Ideas?.... is this dangerous?

I also noticed a similar thing in a certain laptop.

I don't know what causes it, I guess some electrical interference caused by the CPU working harder causes some component to vibrate.

I also have seen a desktop computer that emitted a screeching sound from the speakers when scrolling and moving windows. I think that the audio curciuts were poorly isolated from the CPU.

Anyway, I doubt it's dangerous, but I would also be curious to find out the exact cause.

If the CPU fan is thermostatically controlled, it will speed up whenever you do anything. On my laptop, I notice this sometimes (very subtle).... When I start Windows in VirtualBox, the fan goes full speed.

But---just running the touchpad does not seem that it would cause this....

Probably not......

Certainly plausible....

I had this problem when my line in was on nearly 100% volume. It was hooked to my capture card. Try muting or turning down your line in.

i've had a similar problem on a desktop, a weird kind of scratching noise when i moved windows. turns out, after a hell of a lot of head-scratching, the line-in cable to my soundcard was resting over my graphics card. I taped the cable to the case, and the noise stopped. It appeared that some work on my graphics card was causing just enough rfi that my cable was in just the right position to pick up.

Try turning down the inputs on your soundcard, i set my sound inputs and outputs to ~95% of max volume, and the noise went away (i turned it back up to figure out what the hell it was, but that's because i'm a pedantic geek with too much time on his hands ). i doubt you can move things around inside your laptop so easily, but it's probably nothing more than a cable shifting over time.

A coworker that has a laptop (brand unknown to me) complains that his laptop makes a clicking noise occasionally. He says it seems to happen when he has his cellphone nearby. I noticed a Bluetooth earbud next to it, so I wonder if the RFI from that might have something to do with his situation.

In the Dark Ages (in mid to later 90's) I found this condition on a Linux desktop using a motherboard based sound card (or was it a motherboard-based graphics card?) that had an interrupt interference with the builtin speaker (remember the builtin speaker?). I recall having to mess around with disabling interrupts in the BIOS and/or switching to an expansion-card based sound card or graphics card to make the conflict go away.

Today, however, my betting money is on inadequate RFI isolation in the machine.

bg

Pretty much gaurunteed. I've had the exact problem logged as a service call with a client. mysterious noises from his laptop speakers. turns out, he had a wireless bluetooth headset, and when not wearing it would rest it on the very handy little space between the keyboard and laptop screen... right over the speakers. when the phone polled his bluetooth headset occasionally, the speakers would pick up the rf comm and make little noises.

Phones themselves blast out rfi too, Around the office a couple of people have some el`cheapo brand speakers with build in amplifiers plugged in to their machines. the audio cables are unshielded, and whenever someone gets an sms, there is a very distinctive "bee-de-bee-de-bee" sound from the speakers if the phone is too close to the cables.

iirc, the sound is so common, someone released a song about it, "answer the phone" or something.

and i know this is getting further and further off topic, but just for bgoodr check out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emxPVUM3y54

That's a youtube of the noises the speakers will make when the mobiles rfi is picked up by speakers or cabling. (in this case, cd player speakers by the look of it, but it's the same sound on pc speakers too)