Dan,

It seems to me like it is the CPU fan.  And it seems quite normal.  My
son's Asus bare-bones system we built does that.  The CPU fan is
variable-speed, according to it's temperature.  At boot time the
temperature is unknown, so the fan controller runs at full speed (the safe
thing to do).  As soon as the temperature is known, the fan is slowed to a
reasonable, quiet speed.

I think Walter's issue is a failing CPU fan.  

Paul Jones
[log in to unmask]

At 10:50 PM 2/24/2006 -0500, you wrote:
>Tom - I thought of that too so I unplugged the power to the CD and all
other things I could think of...hard drives, fans, cpu fan.  The noise
still occurs.  I'm left to think it's the cpu, no matter how illogical it
seems.  I read someplace that some Linux users had a similar problem that
was caused by their power option settings, but I have all mine disabled.
>
>Keep throwing ideas at me.  Hopefully there is something I haven't thought
of.
>
>Dan

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