A ticking noise is most likely coming from a cooling fan. They use cheap (very, very cheap) bearings. Eventually you get enough slop in the fan that the blades start touching something.

 

I should have thought of that, since I had to replace mine; hopefully, that's all it is. No big deal if it is.

 

Ticking is a fan clicking is a HD, when the click gets loud enough the HD will go kaboom, you will know when that happens

 

it wouldn't hurt to do a fix disk.

run the error checking utility and it will take any bad/marginal sectors out of use.

when disks get errors they will RTZ, that is Return To Zero, to recalibrate it's position.
This can give a clicking sound although it is not usually load enough to hear easily.

 

When I worked in Noise Engineering, we had a whole list of words pilots used to describe different noises. Some of them were so consistant that we could get a good idea of the problem just from the pilot's description.

 

Yep - and likely as not it's the fan mounted on top of the CPU. As long as it (and the power supply fan) are spinning and the noise isn't intolerable I'd let it go until you see frequent blue screens or other indications that the temps are too high.

It's easy enough to replace either of those components.

The hard drive click/tick of death is an entirely different issue. If the machine still boots this isn't your problem.

 

nothing had a click of death like the iomega Jazz drives.
there was very little doubt that something very, very bad had just occurred.

 

OT... But speaking on noises, our two-month-out-of-full-warranty dishwasher started howling tonight. Probably a motor bearing, I'm thinking. Joys of crap they build these days.

 

OK, last time I try to help in Vintage. Tired of geting stepped on/over. Good luck with the repair, Val, or a new machine. You'll find a replacement very cheap these days. I would not personally bother to fix a 3-year old machine.

 

[quote name='parkerdt' date='Jan 19 2009, 08:47 PM']OK, last time I try to help in Vintage.