hey, what's this ?! I can be wrong, but i think it's not a software problem. My answer can be : Find and boot with a BartPE CD. Wait. Do nothing. Does the noise still appear ? NO > Consider some software to be the problem, and try to find out which one. YES > Consider the problem to be a hardware problem, such as your drive beginning to fail. If this is the case, find you HD Manufacturer URL / Support on the Web to download tools related to it, and try to find out what kind of problem it is (S.M.A.R.T. test, cylinders test, etc, ...) for HITACHI drive, you can try http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm (sorry for bad english ... ) Pierre