Is my hard drive dead/dying?

Question

I reinstalled windows a couple times, after a few months, I have to reinstall again cause files are corrupted or deleted. Now, I keep getting the same error when I try to start it. The unmountable boot place or whatever it was. I tried doing a recovery a couple different ways, but each time it restarts and nothing is fixed. I start it and it says that there is still errors. So is it the hard drive or something else? I tried the microsoft troubleshooting page but nothing fixed it.

Well...the problem is I can't get into windows. And the computer isn't online. So...thats why I think its the hard drive, but I dont want to buy a new one if its not going to fix the problem.

Answer 1

this happened to me.i once restarted my pc because it was slow with errors .when i restored it o turned it on and scan it .alot of spyware and viruses appeared in my scan.i had to scan my pc like 20 times to fully get them out.i dont knonw what it was.you shoud use spysweeper or spydoctor if you have limewire type it in and get it its worth your while of downlading it

Answer 2

An indirect answer to your question might be: if you suspect your hard drive is failing or even it if it's running well, keep all of your files (other than windows) on a drive thats not your C: drive. The drive that you boot from has the highest chance of dieing on you and recovering files after the drive has died is very difficult if not impossible, so use another drive for all files other than windows.

Answer 3

it very well might eb a slowly dying hardrive
try running defrag and or scandisk insode of windows
if you get a lot of errors then you know it'sa slowly going
also check to see if S.M.A.R.T is enabled in the bios to see if you got bad sectors

also
get the following, all are free for a safe surfing experience,
install in SAFE mode with networking ( hit F-8 at boot time ), run them all in SAFE mode
with networking as you'll need it for the updates all the programs below will need.
Turn off RESTORE and the RECYLE BIN temporarily as virii can regenerate / reinfect even if you delete
them with both services on. After all the scanning and cleaning after a 2nd reboot and one last
scan do you turn both of them back on.

ANTI VIRAL

AVG (free) http://free.grisoft.com/


FIREWALL

ZoneAlarm http://www.zonelabs.com/store/content/company/products/znalm/freeDownload.jsp

WEB BROWSER - http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox

EMAIL use thunderbird. It has a good built in spam filter and learns when you teach it. http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird

SPYWARE

http://www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware/

http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html


and if you have a wireless router follow these tips,


1. Use WPA encryption (WPA-PSK) it's less crackable then WEP.

2. Make a passphrase that is upper & lower case and has some numbers thrown in there as well, again harder to crack.
some like mAkE1t5eCurE0rel53 and as long as possible.

3. Use MAC access control so only you or authorized PC's can connect (even if you do have encryption turned on)

4. Turn off DHCP use static addresses.

5. Turn off SSID (and change it) unless your card really needs it (some do)

6. Change username/password of access unit front end

7. Ensure you have the usual firewall enabled on your PC.

8. Paranoia rules, turn WLAN off if your not using it :)


one last tip
control panel---administrator tools--services--messenger

right clik on it
stop the service
then disable it
save changes

Answer 4

You have a "boot sector virus"