Rob 1

I think the last part is telling you that system restore is having trouble monitoring the os for some reason.
And that makes me wonder about the noises you mentioned.
I should have asked you this earlier, but what kind of noises are they?

If they are coming from the hard drive, that's probably a bad sign.

If it's the hard drive, it might be a clicking noise. Even unusually loud seeking sounds can be a sign of drive failure.

If you're not sure, you might want to take the side off of the computer, and put your ear near the hard drive to see if that's where it's coming from.

One thing you can try is to turn off the screen saver and sleep mode.
And set it so the monitor stays on always, as well as the hard drive.

If the hard drive is making noises, you are going to want to backup any important data asap.