Windows

Sound to me like the drive is going bad. There are depending on the settings of scandisk, ways that scandisk will mark sectors or clusters as bad and note them as none usable by files, WITHOUT YOUR knowledge it has done this. What I would do is to goto dos and run scandisk with the syntax
c:>scandisk /all /autofix /surface to check and repair all problems automatically. GOOD LUCK

I Would suggest an immediate replacement of the hard drive, while you can transfer the data off of it on to the new one. Make sure that you set your old drive to slave, and the new one to master, Load Windows onto the new drive, then copy all of the info from the old drive to the new.

When a drive does this consistantly, you are living on borrowed time. Also see the Tech Republic download on ways to revive (temporarily) a dead hard drive. You may need it.

Have you checked for viruses?

If its a windows95 computer 5-7 years old. Check the ribbons to the drives, floppies and board. I suggest you unplug them and then re-seat them, cleaning the contacts.
After all at best it's just thin gold plating and the metal behind it willcorrode through and cause int. connection problems.
If you can tap the case next to the drive next time it happens and then reboot normally, it's probably that.

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