My friend recently got a new laptop, Gateway laptop with AMD 64 turion
processor, not sure which hard drive.

There is this annoying clicking sound coming from the laptop.

Here are some attributes of the sound:

1) It seems to be the same sound as the "Windows Explorer navigation"
sound that you can set in sounds from the control panel. I did try
setting this to "None", but this did not resolve the issue.

2) The sound occurs intermittently even if there is no user on the
laptop, if it is just sitting on the counter, you will be able to hear
the clicking as if someone was clicking on web links in Internet
Explorer.

I have read multiple posts in an attempt to find someone who has
experienced this. The only thing I found is that some people believe
it could be related to "spyware".

Does anyone know what could cause this? A virus? spyware? hard drive
problem?

Thanks in advance,
Kevin