ok...just wanted to say that I think my HD is about to die.
it's been making gravelly noises for a while now, but since I never really had any problems and defragged regulary I didn't mind it much.
But yesterday I open IE and it takes a looong time to 'load'. The HD was working crazy and it wouldn't open until 5 minutes later, after which everything went smooth again.
That's not THAT bad, but just 5 minutes ago the pc went "krrrrr - peeeeep- krrrrr" and then back to normal. During these few seconds the applications I was running "froze" for a moment too.
So...I guess the HD will die. I'm picking up some hardware for my bro in a day or two, better buy me a HD myself just in case, I guess. If it hasn't already died by then.
But for the record...it does sound like a HD dying, right? Cos I might add that I was downloading some stuff at the time the beep-stuff happened, so the HD was relatively busy.