If it's not a floppy in the drive as Mr. Mayer suggested, the only 
moving parts in a pc are fans and the hard drive.  If you check all the 
cables and the tic-toc continues, my guess is the hard drive is kaput.  
You could also try it in another computer as a slave to see if it acts 
differently.   If the drive won't spin or the read/write heads are 
stuck, software generally won't help.  Some people have had luck getting 
a drive to work for a few minutes (long enough to copy some files) by 
placing it in a plastic bag to keep it dry and chilling it in a freezer 
for a half hour or so, tapping it, dropping it onto a hard surface like 
a floor (be careful of damaging whatever surface) - try one thing at a 
time.  These are rather desperate efforts, short of paying someone $$ to 
try to recover your files, and could void your warranty, if you have one.
Thr drive might be under warranty, either from the computer manufacturer 
or the hard drive manufacturer.  At the manufacturer site, you can 
usually just enter the serial number from yours and check their warranty 
requirements.  At least you might get a replacement drive without having 
to pay for it.
If you have access to another computer, you can try downloading boot 
disks for your operating system from:   
http://freepctech.com/pc/002/files010.shtml
There are a bunch of other utilities elsewhere on the site.  Good luck!
Paul Hachmeyer

Rick D'Alton wrote:

>Hello My Name is Rick D'Alton, and my Gateway desktop (WinXPpro w/svpk2) won't boot up. Can anybody help? The other day I ran the 'defrag' prog and and left it alone to do its thing. When I came back the screen was in dos mode with this message, and the computer was making a 'tic toc' (like a clock) noise.
>"Invalid Boot diskette...Insert BOOT diskette in a:
> 
>Is there software that I can run from A: to do diags, or repair, or retrieve some data folders that I forgot to back up??
> 
>Thanks,
>Rick D'Alton
>  
>

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