I cupped my hand around my ear to listen and now I think the sound may be coming from one of the HDDs.  (I still want to get the fan off to clean the heatsink - I have written to AMD about it; waiting to hear back.)  

If it is one of the hard drives, how do I know which one??  The Seagate (which is supposed to have a FIVE year warrantee - if I can find my receipt) is older than the Western Digital, but not by a whole lot.  The Seagate is where my OS is installed.

It seems that some things, WORD 2003 in particular, are very slow to close,   Could this indicate that the system disk is having problems?  The sound occasionally changes - it will be one way for a while and then change to something else - something scarier - for a long while.

I just don't know what to do.  It is so hard to distinguish where sound is coming from.  I suppose I could disconnect the slave drive and see if the problem continues.  ARRGGHH!! I just HATE hardware problems!     --AnnaSummers

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