As for your other issues, I would say the whine you hear is the cpu getting hot, you say the system shuts down also which may also be a sign of a hot cpu and the fail safe is triggered. (speccy will also let us know the cpu temps). The second issue could be a system fan going bad. But those usually do not make a high pitch that you say bothers you. But in any case you can solve both, if you are up to a little dismantle type work. If you want to go for it and try, we can walk you through it. Not difficult at all really, just need to be careful as you do it. These things would probably resolve the issues you have, if not we would need to look at a possible memory stick failing or even windows degrading as it does over time. Both not hard to fix either. So lets start at the web downloads and go from there.