[jbeer]

It started a couple of weeks ago. I turned on my computer and the hard drive clicked and made a winding sound when my operating system was trying to load. It repeated this over and over again without my operating system loading until I turn it off and after multiple attempts of turning the computer on and off, it finally loaded my operating system. I thought this may have been a virus so I formatted my hard drive and reinstalled my XP on it. It has been good for about a week but now it is going on again so I know now that it is not a virus. Does anyone know if it could be my hard drive going bad? It is a 250GB Western Digital if anyone is intersted in knowing. Thanks. Please help:4-dontkno

 

[JMPC]

It would be a good idea to run the WD diagnostic to see if any errors are reported:
WD Support / Downloads / Select Product

 

[jbeer]

Ran the WD diagnostic for windows and it came back clean with no errors

 

[Fred Garvin]

If your hard drive is making a clicking noise, I would not trust it or continue to use it. It's a sign of impending hardware failure.

 

[JMPC]

It certainly may be fine but you may also want to drive the Hitachi Drive Fitness test which runs outside of Windows and really checks the drive thoroughly. You may also want to try Active SMART and see if anything unusual shows up:
Active SMART 2.62 - Free software downloads and software reviews - CNET Download.com

 

[jbeer]

Thanks, I will try these things now. It has changed once again though. It no longer makes the clicking sounds but now it takes about 10 times longer to load my desktop. I have to believe that something is awry with it and although viruses are always something to consider, I have a very hard time thinking of that as a potential cause because I very recently formatted my hard drive, reinstalled windows xp, and have AVG running as well and this clicking and slowness came with very little internet useage

 

[Fred Garvin]

You could try disconnecting the IDE ribbon cable or the SATA cable and leave the power connection on, power the computer on and see if it still clicks.

You could also try running CHKDSK /R from a command prompt in Windows, select Y to run Chkdsk the next time you reboot and restart the PC. If Chkdsk isn't finding errors and runs clean, run SFC /Scannow at a command prompt in Windows. But my $ is on a failing hard disc.

 

[raptor_pa]

Don't run checkdisk on a clicking drive. You will likely have unrecoverable data when it finishes. Chkdsk only operates at the file system level for some simple indexing issues.