Virus or Corrupt HD?

[FoolishMcNasty]

A friend of mine dumped his "broken" computer on my hands to see if I could determine what was wrong with it. When I boot the machine, it posts, then starts SCANDISK, but seizes up. Then after the next reboot, it seizes up before scandisk. I have been able to boot it with a floppy. When I try to run WINDOWS from command prompt, the computer starts beeping and the screen quickly fills with all sorts of weird characters (spades, numbers, etc.). Is this a bad HD or is it a virus? Any help would be much appreciated.

 

[DaiShan]

sounds like a bad hdd, when it freezes in scandisk it normally means there is something physically wrong with the drive, is it RMA'able?

 

[FoolishMcNasty]

Not sure if it can be RMA'd, but it should still be under warranty.
Is there any thing you can suggest to try to save some of the contents?

BTW- If it helps, the system wont recognize the CD-ROM drive (not sure if that helps).

 

[Pundit]

If you know how, you can try adding that HD to another working computer as the second drive. Then you can transfer any data onto the other HD.

Also, have you looked at the CMOS settings to make sure everything is correct? (i.e. PCI bus at 33?)