Either you, or a computer savvy friend should take a closer look
to find the exact source of the noise.
Until you know what is making the noise, you are spinning your wheels.

FWIW, if you see it is a fan, it will do no good to oil it.
That might give it "a little" extra life, but I have found after a mechanical device
actually starts to make lots of racket, it has generally been too damaged to
respond to "just oil" as a cure...

If/when you open the case, look for wires that might have shifted and fallen
into the path of a fan blade. Some CPU fans have just about nothing to keep
the wires out.
                                                Rick Glazier


From: "Joyce A"
> 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! 

                         PCBUILD's List Owners:
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                        Mark Rode<[log in to unmask]>