I just turned my laptop on today about ten minutes ago.
It’s been reading the hard drive pretty much nonstop since I turned it on, and this is unusual.
It’s been running slowly, as well, which is unusual.
A minute ago, it just beeped at me. Like a genuine, honest to goodness, 1980’s PCjr style beep. As in I’m not even sure it came from the speaker I usually use to listen to music with–it sounded for all the world like an old fashioned “internal speaker” type beep.
And now it’s telling me it needs to restart before “completing the update.” (The standard WinXP dialogue, with the countdown and the choice to restart now or later.)
Should I be frightened?
-FrL-
Forgot to mention: Task Manager reveals nothing unusual.
Also, a second ago, it finally stopped reading the hard drive and is no longer running slowly. So if something terrible was happening, it appears it has finished happening, which would not be good news if it was indeed something terrible…
-FrL-
I just have to say this; when I saw your thread title, I thought maybe you didn’t get a proper lapdance. 
It sounds like it was just downloading some Windows updates, if so then it would have been writing to the disk (not reading from it).
It was the weird beep that scared me.
-FrL-
Perhaps a hard drive sector(s) is failing. This can cause your OS to read and re-read the hard drive, until the data makes sense. This costs money but look at