Malware

There are a number of things you could do to diagnose and resolve this glitch, but ultimately you may lose the data on your hard drive. The problem could be a corrupted Master Boot Record (MBR), or a failing hard drive.

If this were my laptop, assuming it's worth repairing, I would do the following:

1) Replace the hard drive. These run ~$60 for 80GB capacity (NewEgg.com). Installation is a 10-minute do-it-yourself project.

2) Reinstall the operating system from the installation disc(s). The HD should be pre-formatted (NTFS).

You can expect some excellent postings on this intriguing subject, and I hope you will give us a follow-up report on what ultimately succeeded in fixing your laptop.

Rick/Portland, OR

I would go with the suggestion of the last post try getting a new HDD and then putting a fresh OS on it.. Funny thing is, that I had this happen on my desktop. I found out in the end it was a bad stick of RAM..

All I can say is If it still does this after the fresh install, it might be a bad Mem sector on your RAM. I do know that they make mem testers that run in the BIOS but the name evades me right now if you have a seconday computer google one of these mem testers, anything at this point is worth a shot..

I hate to suggest buying more parts for your laptop if it never fixes it. It might almost be cheaper to just build a new one. But hopfully this helps you out some.

Good luck to you

Maetaris raises a good point. There is a free Memory Testing program published by Microsoft:

http://oca.microsoft.com/en/windiag.asp

Apparently you burn it to a CD and then boot the computer from the CD. The test can take up to 30 minutes. So you might be able to check the memory modules before deciding upon HD replacement.

I hope you'll give Maetaris a thumbs up for his excellent suggestion...

Rick/Portland, OR

I would run diagnostics on the HD. Assuming you know how to pull the HD out, look at who the HD manufacturer is. Then go to thier website and download thier diagnostics. Most have an .iso file that will make a bootable CD that will run the diagnostics. Determine your HD needs replaced before replacing it. If it passes diagnostics, then there is obviously something else going on. I doubt you have a memory issue if the machine ran fine before, but it's not impossible. That being said, if you had HD errors, then some files probably got hosed. You can try running CHKDSK /r from the recovery console and see if that fixes the corrupt files. If not, then you can try a repair install of Windows with the XP CD that should have came with your notebook.

If the HD fails the diagnostics, replace the drive, reload Windows. The drive isn't totally hosed because it will start to load windows so getting data off of it is worthy of a fresh POST probably. Too many different ways to go about getting to it.