Ok i'm having a very weird problem. I've tried searching for others w/ similar situations but they dont get exactly the same error message.
I'm pretty sure there's a problem with my hard drive(s). When I boot up I get this sound coming from my case. It sounds like something is powering up ... then abruptly stopping with a noticable "click" to it. I'm dual booting, and this problem occurs when I boot up windows, as well as when I try to install slackware.
I opened up the case while I was trying to install slackware on my secondary drive (a maxtor 80gb). I figured that the problem lied within the secondary drive. I used my multimeter to check the voltage for both hd's and they're fine. While doing this I realized that the sound seemed to be coming from the first drive. (This seemed to make a little more sense, as the ticking sound could be reproduced on almost every windows start up).
The first time I tried to install slack, it finished, but upon inspection, I noticed that many important packages, such as fonts, were missing. Thats when I decided to do a reinstall. The reinstall did not take, and gave many errors, such as "hdb: dma_intr status=0x00 or 0x10; hdb DMA disabled." I then figured that since I was fairly confident that it was the first drive, that I should just unplug the power from the first drive while attempting an install of slack. I tried this, which removed the annoying ticking sound, but still produced a troubled installation. I was willing to live with that installation, but then I realized that i needed to install lilo on the mbr of the first hd. I plugged that one back in, and the lilo install fails of course.
In windows I installed a hard drive utility which says that everything is fine on both my western digital and my maxtor. I tried to install asus probe, a mobo monitoring utility, but i get a general file transfer error in windows.
In retrospect I realize that this is probably a compound problem, but I'm still unsure of what to do. Should I try a new ide cable? Is my hdd going bad?
Do i need to update the bios (maybe a problem w/ ide controller?)
Thanks in advance.

It's been a long while since I've heard the loud click from a hard drive (like MFM days), but if I remember correctly that is the sound of a damaged head, most likely swinging and hitting the center or the case of the drive!

Can you swap it with another drive and try again?