Virus or HD dying?

[lbrty4us]

With no prior problems & after a good shutdown, I'm suddenly getting a
very long boot, long drive-thrashing delays for most operations, and
continual errorlog Event ID 7's (HD has bad block). XP Home help/HD
diagnostic test tool runs beliefly & reports read failure, "see
warranty." Also this laptop drive always used to make a loud
mechanical click when clicking any HTML link, now silent. But all
data eventually gets read or written. Did important backups to CD of
course, with it limping along. But there is no alarm-type message for
drive failure or any other indication, only the very slow operation
with the thrashing, and its sudden onset has me wondering if any
malware or worm may be the problem. It is not practically possible to
run malware scanners now due to the slowdown & thrashing (they run for
over an hour, & report more files scanned than existing, before
pooping out or locking up). Can't run defrag either, same reason,
would take 5 years. But I can access the Registry & everything else
on the HD (with delays).

First bootup produced a VB Crypto error reading key container -23, and
RT Error 410 "can't show non-modal from when a modal form is
displayed." This occured while loading a startup spyware app that
always started fine, and that I've since uninstalled. (It's SpyHunter
junk & outdated.)

Anyone aware of any worm (or other) known to cause this behavior,
before I ship it off to the usual black hole of Compaq warranty
service?

Much TIA,
Frank

 

[Gary Davis]

Better back it up! Your hard drive is failing.

 

[D.Currie]

With no prior problems & after a good shutdown, I'm suddenly getting a
very long boot, long drive-thrashing delays for most operations, and
continual errorlog Event ID 7's (HD has bad block). XP Home help/HD
diagnostic test tool runs beliefly & reports read failure, "see
warranty." Also this laptop drive always used to make a loud
mechanical click when clicking any HTML link, now silent. But all
data eventually gets read or written. Did important backups to CD of
course, with it limping along. But there is no alarm-type message for
drive failure or any other indication, only the very slow operation
with the thrashing, and its sudden onset has me wondering if any
malware or worm may be the problem. It is not practically possible to
run malware scanners now due to the slowdown & thrashing (they run for
over an hour, & report more files scanned than existing, before
pooping out or locking up). Can't run defrag either, same reason,
would take 5 years. But I can access the Registry & everything else
on the HD (with delays).

First bootup produced a VB Crypto error reading key container -23, and
RT Error 410 "can't show non-modal from when a modal form is
displayed." This occured while loading a startup spyware app that
always started fine, and that I've since uninstalled. (It's SpyHunter
junk & outdated.)

Anyone aware of any worm (or other) known to cause this behavior,
before I ship it off to the usual black hole of Compaq warranty
service?

Much TIA,
Frank

Sounds like the hard drive is dying. The manufacturer of the drive should
have diagnostic software on their website that you can run. Most of those,
you run from a floppy, so you're not trying to run it through Windows at
all. It still might take a while, but at least you'd know for sure.

 

[lbrty4us]

Better back it up! Your hard drive is failing.

Probably. Fixed with chkdsk /f /r & it's running fast again for the
moment, but it won't pass a diagnostic read & is probably on borrowed
time.

 

[Alex Nichol]

With no prior problems & after a good shutdown, I'm suddenly getting a
very long boot, long drive-thrashing delays for most operations, and
continual errorlog Event ID 7's (HD has bad block). XP Home help/HD
diagnostic test tool runs beliefly & reports read failure, "see
warranty." Also this laptop drive always used to make a loud
mechanical click when clicking any HTML link, now silent. But all
data eventually gets read or written. Did important backups to CD of
course, with it limping along. But there is no alarm-type message for
drive failure or any other indication, only the very slow operation
with the thrashing, and its sudden onset has me wondering if any
malware or worm may be the problem.

That sounds like a definite hardware problem, disk about to fail. I
would get it seen to by a proper repair shop - agents for the maker
given that it is a laptop.