Last night I put the F500BT to my ear and was surprised to hear a whine coming from it. Could there be a hard drive in there?

I tried opening the case, but after extensive pulling on the case after opening the screws was not able to figure out what was holding it, and I was a bit afraid to try any more.

Anyways, can anyone else conform that their unit has whine as well when operating.

///As an addendum after backing up, I wiped the entire 'My Flash Disk' folder and started the unit. It was stuck at the 'Pioneer' screen but working, which means that the Windows CE installation itself is not on the 'My Flash Disk' but is located somewhere else. And that probably also means that there is some file in this other location that is calling upon the AVIC shell to start. There is a good chance that this file maybe in ROM and may not be editable. Just Wondering !!!

the wine I hear on mine is the fan.... but I have a f90bt...

Fan on the back. Its a big sucker

There's no fan or hard drive, the 500 is solid state with NAND flash memory, which is where I think the WindowsCE lives. My unit doesn't make any noise, so maybe you need to return it........

I have 90BT and that fan is gnarly especially when you pull the system out of the dash.

I have a little V8 under the hood so no fan noise for me

The whine is likely produced by the power unit for LCD. This is quite common in all kinds of devices that have these screens. Even Ipod or wrist watches can produce whine when back light is on.