[dootthaloop]

I'm having a strange issue with my PC lately; I have it dual booted for Vista on one partition and XP Pro on another. Previously I was working solely in Vista but for various reasons decided to switch back to XP. I've noticed that when I'm in Vista, my PC will make no noise at all regardless of what I'm doing (unless its something that requires alot of resources then it may make a little noise), while in XP my PC is making loud fan noises constantly (and I'm doing the minimalistic things in XP that I also did in Vista such as IM and browsing the internet for the most part, not to mention I only have msconfig set to startup with basic things related to my graphics drivers and such like I did with Vista, as a matter of fact I'm using the same installed programs on XP that I am on Vista). I can't really narrow down the problem either, the loud noises start as soon as I begin to boot into XP but when I start to boot into Vista they get quieter and quieter until I'm logged in and they stop.
So here's my questions to you, is this a hardware issue or (strangely) a software issue? How could I troubleshoot it to find out which it is and what's causing the fan noise problem? (For further reference I consider myself decent with PCs; I've installed plenty of hardware and done some in-depth Windows stuff before so I don't need a simplified answer; if its new fans I need then feel free to tell me.) I'm guessing you may possibly need more info about specs and such, so go ahead and ask if you need to know anything specific. Thanks in advance, I'd really like to go ahead and resolve this issue (it's driving me crazy)!

[MaverickUK]

Well you can answer one of your own questions. To see if it's a software issue within Windows XP try loading in Safe Mode with Networking, use the system as your normally would and see if the symptoms persist. If they don't, you may have a wrongly configured driver/program.

[dootthaloop]

I did what MaverickUK said, and for a good measure I booted into Vista first and left it alone for a few minutes to make sure the noises would "calm down", then rebooted back into XP Safe Mode With Networking. However, as it was loading the system files the noises began once again and by the time I had logged in completely, the noises were as loud and persistant as ever before I even had a chance to try doing normal tasks. I even gave it a few minutes to see if it would keep making the noises and it did so I rebooted back normally and here I am. So does this definately conclude it's a hardware issue rather than a driver or program?

[loserOlimbs]

It does it in only one operating system, that says to me NOT a hardware issue.

It is a desktop? Check your power save features, fan settings and what not. I would think it is a XP, or driver issue. I bet if you reinstalled XP the issue would be gone, but of course that is probably not what you want.

[dootthaloop]

Yes, it is a desktop PC (HP Pavilion). I checked Power Options and it is set to a Home/Office Desk power scheme, not sure if I'd need to change anything there as I don't want the monitor, hard drives, or standby activated automatically; nor do I know if I should tamper with the other tabs. As for fan speed, I downloaded a small freeware app called SpeedFan to see what it said, and I don't want to tamper with any of the options unless I know it would help out the situation because it has some advanced settings; on the other hand I haven't checked if it monitors fan speed in my BIOS yet... if so, would it be safe to change it at all? I don't want to make matters worse than they are now. Additionally I checked Device Manager to see if there were any driver issues but everything there looked fine. And you're right, I don't want to reinstall XP because ever since I switched back to it I've been working hard to restore my programs, files, and settings just how I like them and to me this seems to be one tiny bug that could be worked out somehow if I can narrow down the problem enough. In the meantime, is there anything I can possibly use to safely disable drivers one by one to see if I can tell if some driver I have installed is the issue?