This morning when I tried to boot up my three-year-old eMachines, running Win XP Home, SP3, I heard a loud, continuous rattling sound.  When the page came up, each icon in the toolbar jittered for a moment, and the clicking sound continued, so I shut down and tried again:  same thing happened.  Is my hard disk fried?  Is it safe to boot it up long enough to back my files up to the 8-gig USB memory stick I bought last week?  And is there anything special I need to do in order to back things up?  I figure I'm going to need a new computer, or at least a new hard drive...  Many thanks for any help!

Joyce in SE Ohio

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                        Mark Rode<[log in to unmask]>