Is my Hard Drive dying?

[Spyder4765]

I've had my computer for 5 years now and never had any problems with it. Well, just today I left my dorm room and when I came back my computer was sitting in DOS mode and said "Operating System not Found" so I rebooted and Windows came up just fine. So I was on it later and it froze up and did the same thing, so I rebooted again but it came up again. So I turned it off and then when I turned it back on it worked fine again. Now I'm typing this now, I'm not sure if my Hard Drive is dying or if it's an operating system error. So I'm gonna post this on the OS part of the forum. Any help would be appreciated.

Specs:
Windows XP
1 GB Kingston PC2700 Ram
80 GB Western Digital HD
Pentium 4 3.2Ghz Processor
Radeon 9700 Pro

 

[Ste]

Has it made and clicking sounds as of late.

Run Check Disk on it.
Start>Run>Cmd> Chkdsk

 

[Spyder4765]

Well I ran the Check disk and it said there were errors and to run CHKDSK /F to fix it so I tried that but it said it was being using by another program so I scheduled it to do run it as soon as I restart it. So we'll see what happens.

 

[Spyder4765]

Ya, it didn't find anything

 

[pcblue]

is it making any kind of strange noise?

btw, it may b due to bad sectors in your hdd. try pq magic for badsector retest and get the results first.

 

[jeremy]

get it checked with DLG diagnostic http://support.wdc.com/download/index.asp?cxml=n&pid=999&swid=30
also see this article http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;321626

 

[Ste]

Its a good idea to back up your information if you haven't already, I would then see if a reformat and reinstall fixs the problem.

 

[Alf Poier]

My owl has died - I know how you feel

 

[Spyder4765]

Well this morning I went to start up my PC and no go, same error over and over. So I opened up my PC and unhooked the IDE cable, cleared away some dust and reconnected it. Now it's working, could have been a loose connection, I had just recently installed a wireless card so I might have knocked something loose. I'll run the diagnostic thing and see if I find anything but I'm thinking the loose connection was the problem.

 

[RicoDirenzo]

Sounds to me like your Power supply is the culprit.