XP-Pro HD noise

Hi. I would appreciate any help with these questions thanks. I have installed
XP-Pro a few times on my machine to reformat HD because when I go into
the F1 at start up it say's I am using win98/win2000 . I can't get to say XP-Pro?
The HD makes noises every time I log on/off from different users. Is this normal?
Is it writing something to HD everytime? Is it possible to turn this on/off? I have
insatalled SP2 from a disk I received from Microsoft and updated last week from
the web site. Thanks.

 

You need to press f1 to boot your machine ? Something weird - your battery is most probably dead.

From your post it appears that your hard disk is about to fail or is very old if its making noises while logging off. Run chkdsk (thorough) on the drive or download manufacturers utility to test the drive. There is always some IO when you are logging in or out but by no means you should hear any noise (at least in modern disks)

 

Hi. I never thought of the battery. I'll try and find it and replace it. The system is an HP 8660 P111. The hard drive is only about a year old Western Digital. The noise is it seems to be writing to it or something else every time I log off? I never had it make that noise with WIN98 SE. Thanks for the help.