New noise, strange results.

So anyhow, I was running a game on my PC last night and all the sudden i hear this clicking-type noise coming from my case, like a switch being flipped on and then off, followed by a beep i've never heard before. When this happened, the game temporarily froze (similar to a bad lag spike). Anyhow, as the night went on i was able to recreate the noise while opening any program, internet connected or not, or even just sitting on an empty desktop. Always it caused the same "lag", and 3 times it caused my PC to lock up. It hasn't done it so far today but it certainly wasn't normal. Any ideas? Oh, btw I'm running an ECS k7s5a, athlon xp 2400+ 2.0ghz, 768 ddr, geforce 4 5200fx(128). Any more info needed let me know. help?

sounds like a bad hard drive. is it real loud clicking or is it quieter. if it when you are opening a program thats what id think it is as the hdd is accessing it from the disk.

Yep - sounds like the heads of the HDD clicking to engage and missing.

[size=3]The next thing you should do after reading these words is back up all of your data - take a snapshot of your whole HDD if you can onto removable media!!

:)
Oz