is my HDD dying on me??!?!?!?

[OOBradm]

ok, here are my sys specs:

AMD XP1600+
385 pc2100 ddrram
geforce 2mx400
win98se
all new drivers
new mobo w/ AMD chipset
3 year old maxtor 20Gb hdd

now..................a few weeks ago I was playing MOH:AA and it froze on me. I figured it was just a fluke and restarted. About 30 min later it happened again. At that point I just thought that the game was not completely compatible with something on my PC and didnt worry about it. Then, about a week later I was playing deus ex and it locked up for maybe 3 or 4 seconds. No big deal, right? but then 3 minutes later it happened again. and again. and then it would do it almost every minute. then I started to get worried. 2 days ago, deus ex completely froze, and that happens often now.

just today, I tried to turn my PC on, and it wouldnt even turn on. It said "could not load explorer.exe, you need to reinstall windows" and also, I have getright and it said it couldnt find getright.exe, so obviously it could not access my hdd. Its a miracle that its running right now to be typing this. I just tried to turn it on and it magically worked this time, but I get all sorts of error messages constantly. is it my HDD?

 

[4824guy]

Use the MaxtorBlaster software that came with the retail HD or download it from their web site. Run the Diagnositcs tests on it. That will test out the HD.

 

[4824guy]

You can download the Maxtor software right...here

 

[vedin]

Here's a few biguns. Does it make any different noises than it used to? Louder, or softer? It could just be Windows crapping out on ya. Trust me, happens. I've had to reinstall my fair share of times for no reason. Since you can't load Windows, try going into DOS mod on your WIN98,(I assume it's 98), CD and run it from there. If it gives you an unusual amount of errors, refuses to run, restarts nearly infinately or just finds a bunch of bad sectors, it's prolly the HDD.