Hi, I've been having an issue on my laptop for at least a month or so....every few minutes the CD makes a noise like something is moving in it, even though there is no CD there. At the same time, prepar3d (and truthfully anything I'm running) pauses. I'm sure this is something simple to fix, any ideas?

 

Thanks,

Scott

Probably some background task trying to poll the drives. Look at what you have running in the BG.

 

Vic

Hi Vic, is there a way to actually determine this vs. just randomly trying a ton of different background tasks? I would think somewhere (???) there would be a log showing a thread trying to access that drive or something. Just not sure how to nail down what it might be.

 

Appreciate the help, this is driving me crazy (and it's not a very long drive...)

Thanks!

Scott

This sounds more like your laptop is overheating CPU/GPU  the fan goes to max but unable to cool all applications running would freeze.

Actually, this likely has to do with internal bus communications (and the chips that control them including the CPU), which in your case is lagging you out a bit. Laptops don't have the available bus bandwidth that desktops do.  Of course it's not just the disk ramping up, but being accessed (read/write), and when you initially place is disk in the CD/DVD drive Windows is going to access it to find out what's there.

As someone already said, it's best to limit background applications from running while using a resource hog like FSX/P3D.

Best wishes!

I think I'm leaning towards the overheating idea. Even if the optical drive could spin without a disc, it wouldn't cause anything to pause. However, too high a CPU temp probably would. If you can monitor the temp, I bet you'll find it's going too high. As has already been stated, the fan is going full blast. If that is the case the fan is probably going bad and will need to be replaced. I've had this happen.