wierd rattle noise

I go to boot up my computer today (win ME by the way)and i get this sound - like the sound of a rattlesnake's rattle - and when my screen comes on all i have is like 4 lines of info, like my video info, you know the info that flashed on the screen at begining of boot? But it doesn't continue it just stops there. And the noise continues. I hit a key on keyboard (though i don't know if that had anything to do with what happened next because keyboard did not work after that) and after i hit key, i get long beep, then bursts of beeps, all funny like, and the noise goes from a constant unchanging rattle like tone to now be a different sound, more of a clackety clack sound (kind of like the sound you'd get if the wheels of a bike were spinning and you ran a stick against the spokes) but this sound is not a constant - it kind of stops and starts and strains a bit - really fluctuating. (Have I lost you guys yet??) I tried the reset button several times but every tiem was same.
Is this a sign of some type of hardware failure? Or is it a fluke or what. My computer is maybe 3years old, 4 years tops so its not ancient or anything but....

I know you guys will ask me about my hardware info and cause i'm not too knowledgable about what you might need, i can give you this, and hope its usable....

Processor: GenuineIntel Family 6 Model 8 930 MHz Stepping 6
Math Support: On Chip
BIOS: American Megatrends 06/28/00
Bus Type: PCI,ISA,AGP,USB
Ports: 1 Parallel, 1 Serial
Memory: 128 MB (97% Utilized)
Floppy Disks: 1.44 MB
Hard Disks: 28.63 GB
Multimedia: Sound, CD-ROM
Video: 800x600 in 64K Colors, NVIDIA GeForce2 MX Ver. 4.0

< Operating System >
Windows: 4.90 (Build 3000 )
DOS: 8.0
Net Clients:
Microsoft Network

 

The only things making noises in a computer can be mechanical drives (floppy, cd-rom, hdd) or fans.
I guess it's the hard drive. Try to boot with a floppy disk.

 

Open the case and try to pinpoint where the noise is coming from. Noise isnot good. Once you have it open you have a better idea where it is coming from. Also try booting with a bootdisk but you may have to go into bios to set it to look to floppy drive first. Let us know what you find out and we can go from there.

 

n2gun, unfortunatley I wouldn't know how to do that, go into bios and set it to do something, but This is what i did.....I opened up my case and, cause i don't know enough to NOT mess something up, I juts looked. Fiddled with a few connections but they all lookd to be secure. I reconnected back the monitor, printer, mouse etc (cause i gotta disconnect them to get my tower down and get to where i can open it) and booted up my computer and the sound was gone, everything just peachy, and i shut down and restarted a couple times to be sure.
So even though the sound is gone and all, the fact that i really did not do anything that could have solved it worries me. Think possibly that this is just a warning of a problem that could occur soon. Is it? Or a fluke?

 

It is possible that there was something touching one of the fans and by opening it checking cables etc that you moved what ever it was away from the fan. If it does not start again don't worry about it.