Is my hard drive going bad???

[chille1972]

Ok been having some problems for a while now with os so decided to wipe out everything and start over.
now i reformated then the system went to reboot and then kept looping me back to the winxp cd to format again.

I then took out my hdd and inspected it and let it sit for a while, then put it back in and it booted up and started to install windows got so for through it and stopped responding. i rebooted but now hangs up at verifying dmi pool data.

has anyone ever heard of a hdd failing like this???

 

[bacillus]

have you tried using WD hdd utility for checking the drive?

 

[chille1972]

(UPDATE)

ok now i managed to get a fresh install of xp everythings going good then bang the pc shuts down and restarts and i get the message that a file in windows\system32\config\system was ether missing or corrupt.


this drive is driving me nuts, i have a wd 20gb that i put a fresh install on and it runs fine but i would like to have the space of the 40gb plus if it is bad its still under waranty and i will send it back.

any thoughts would be great.

thanks in advance

 

[Rick014]

I've seen this before caused by bad sectors at the front of the drive.
When running windows and installing a program, it's usually smart enough not to write to bad sectors. When installing windows, it goes strait through, bad sectors or not. You could try a lowlevel format to see if you could fix or mark the bad sectors, if it still doesn't work, it's time for an RMA.