Problems with Thinkpad R31 Laptop

[JohnCU]

I had to buy a laptop for college, and I got the IBM Thinkpad R31 because the school had a deal with IBM so we could purchase it cheaper...

Well, lately the harddrive has been acting funny. Aside from making the most horrible noises I've ever heard, the system sometimes gets bogged down in the harddrive and the harddrive activity LED will stay lit up for a long time. It's on right now. Other times I'll just be sitting here listening to music and the light will come on and the harddrive will start making tons of noise and the music will start skipping and programs will stop responding. I scanned for viruses, none. No spyware, either. I realize the hdd is only 4200 rpm, but it shouldn't bog down like this I wouldn't think.

Specs: 1.13ghz P3, 256mb RAM, 20gb hdd

EDIT: Yes, the hdd is in DMA mode, but it flip-flops back and forth between that and PIO.

 

[sandmanwake]

Could be a bad hard drive. Does your school have a laptop support center? I've seen quite a few R31's with the symptoms you described where the hard drive died on the students. Also, are you one of those people who have like 3 file sharing programs installed on there, of course with all the spyware that comes with them and has a ton of stuff on Startup?

 

[JohnCU]

No, I use Ad-Aware every week and I have very few items that start up (only the essential items, it's probably this Novell crap).