Also did you hold down C, boot from the system CD, and run Disk Utility then?
I’m the head Mac Geek at a large ad agency. I have never hear a click-whirr-click-whirrr-click-whirrr from a hard drive that was anything but about to die.
Back your stuff up pronto. Your hard drive is about to die.
I’m sorry, could you explain this to me in layman’s terms? 
Actually, the HD wasn’t doing click-whir. It just seemed to be spinning over and over like a record with the needle stuck in a groove.
I explained booting in single user mode upthread… restart your Mac, hold down command (apple key) and “s” simultaneously. It will go to a black screen, with a lot of Unix stuff. Once it’s done and the cursor is active, type:
fsck -yf
This is a command that forces a disk repair.
once it’s done, type
reboot
and you should be back in business. But it really sounds like your disk is about to die. Right now, start pulling off the stuff you can’t live without, because if it’s ready to go, even an attempted repair could kill it off.
Did you start from the OS X install disc and try to use Disk Utility from there?