[KitP]

Can anyone help me with this? I have a Gateway with Windows XP that is about three years old, and a three or four year old Compaq monitor. Yesterday my computer was doing fine. Now it is making a clicking noise (a series of short, fast clicks that come immediately one after the other) whenever I turn it on, and after a few seconds of having a normal screen, everything becomes tinted blue. Additionally, any time the mouse pointer passes over something, that program is opened in about 10 to 30 separate windows whether or not I clicked on it. I can't turn it off the proper way either, because whenever the mouse hovers over "turn off computer" it automatically goes to standby instead of shutting down.

The clicking noise also occurred about a year and a half ago, but it coincided with a bad virus that caused me to wipe the whole computer, and once I'd rebooted everything, the noise seemed to solve itself, so I didn't worry about it. I'm not a very hardware-savvy person and really don't know what to do here, so any advice would be extremely appreciated.

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If the clicking sound comes from your hard drive....

So called hard drive's Click of death is, in most cases, a warning, that the hard drive is about to fail, and all data is lost.
There may be some other reasons for clicking sound, like: bad power connector, defective motherboard, or defective hard drive's board, but in your best interest, it's better to assume, that hard drive itself is failing, and to try to recover data, as soon, as possible.
If your hard drive is still accessible, back up your data immediately, and start shopping for new hard drive.
If you can't access the hard drive, you have two options:
1. Remove the drive, and slave it in another working computer. An excellent tutorial can be found HERE
2. Buy hard drive enclosure, put your dying hard drive into it, connect the enclosure to the working computer's USB port, and to the power source. Enclosed hard drive will pop up in My Computer as another drive. Your best option is to buy ATA/SATA compatible enclosure (it comes with two sets of cables). In this case, you don't have to worry, what is the type of your hard drive.

[Broni]

If the clicking sound comes from your hard drive....

So called hard drive's Click of death is, in most cases, a warning, that the hard drive is about to fail, and all data is lost.
There may be some other reasons for clicking sound, like: bad power connector, defective motherboard, or defective hard drive's board, but in your best interest, it's better to assume, that hard drive itself is failing, and to try to recover data, as soon, as possible.
If your hard drive is still accessible, back up your data immediately, and start shopping for new hard drive.
If you can't access the hard drive, you have two options:
1. Remove the drive, and slave it in another working computer. An excellent tutorial can be found HERE
2. Buy hard drive enclosure, put your dying hard drive into it, connect the enclosure to the working computer's USB port, and to the power source. Enclosed hard drive will pop up in My Computer as another drive. Your best option is to buy ATA/SATA compatible enclosure (it comes with two sets of cables). In this case, you don't have to worry, what is the type of your hard drive.