WinXP Pro freezing and making weird noise

[chiu397]

Anyone know why this is happening?
Lately in WinXP Pro I have been getting slow performance and Not Responding messages and errors from simple little tasks, like copying/moving files from one hard drive to another.

But this is just minor compared to the sudden freezing of my system, which is also associated with a weird noise. Sounds something like a continuous scratch noise(kinda like a modem sound), then two click sounds.

I made sure that I'm completely up to date on all of my system and device drivers, my WinXP is all up to date, removed all spy-ware, and no viruses are detected, so other than that I don't know what's wrong.

I am defragging all of my drives(6 HD's), hoping this will fix my slow performance problem.

Do you think the freezing is associated to the slow performance?

Any help would be much appreciated.
Thanks in advance.

BTW, here are my system specs:
AMD Athlon XP 1800+
Elitegroup(ECS) K7S5A-Pro Mainboard
1Gb Ram
Windows XP Pro
ATI All-In-Wonder 8500 128MB
Sound Blaster Audigy Platinum
4 X 40GB Maxtor HD's
1 X 80GB SeaGate HD
1 X 160GB 8MB Cache HD (Partitioned)100GB/60GB

 

[bcastner]

This sounds exactly like an imminent catastrophic failure of your hard disk drive.

 

[chiu397]

have you encountered something like this before?

The Hard Drive with WinXP Pro on it is a 40GB Maxtor and its brand new.

I'm also reinstalling all of the sound drivers, maybe this will help.

Any other suggestions?

Thanks of the reply.

 

[bcastner]

Can you tell if the weird noise is coming from your speakers, or from somewhere else?

 

[chiu397]

It is coming from my speakers. After my last post, I reseated my sound card and reinstalled all of my audigy drivers and apps.

Hopefully this helps, I'll keep you posted if it happenes again.

 

[outonalimb]

You could try running the following software to monitor the health of your hard disks:

http://www.ariolic.com/activesmart/

It's a thirty day trial download but it will at least indicate if you have any disk problems.

Your disks must be SMART aware for the software to work.

Regards,

 

[chiu397]

thanks, I'll give it a try and let you know how it turns out.

SMART Aware....as in turning the SMART feature on in the BIOS?

 

[outonalimb]

That's right. Turn SMART on in your BIOS.

Regards,