[lilkoolaidman]

I was using WMM and it suddenly froze (shocking I know). but instead of just itself freezing, my whole computer froze and I had to do a hard shut down. Ever since my computer just hasn't worked right. It now slows up every now and then and sometimes freezes again. Once a blue screen came up and it just restarted (couldn't read what the blue screen said, but it wasn't the blue screen of death). It started back up and a message came up that said something like, "Windows was temporarily unable to read your hard drive and had to restart". I ran a disk check but on step 4 of 5 it would get stuck on 3%.

Mainly what I want to know is:
Could this be fixed virtually, or is it physical?
Is it really my hard drive?

OS: Windows XP SP3
Computer:Gateway MX6214 (Had 2GB of RAM put in a year ago so the performance shouldn't be RAM related)

Don't have an XP disc, so formatting is not an option for me.
Computer starts and works, but not well.

[Elvandil]

There is file system damage every time you do a hard shutdown. Have you run chkdsk /f on that drive since (or even /r is better)? The disk check needs to finish. Stopping it leads to more file system damage and it may be unrecoverable. How long did you wait? Was the drive still active?

Go to Start > Run, and type:

sysdm.cpl

Under the Advanced tab, Startup settings button, uncheck the box at the bottom about automatically restarting so you will get more data next time.

If you want to test the drive, find a bootabe test among these:

Free Hard Drive Testing Applications:

Manufacturer's Tests
Victoria for DOS
Victoria for Windows (Both versions of Victoria are among the best and most thorough tests available.)
HD Tune
CheckDisk 1.03 (Marks bad sectors as unusable.)
HDAT2 (Diagnostics and bad sector recovery)
MHDD Low-level Diagnostics
Bootable Hitachi Drive Fitness Test Floppy or CD Image (works on most drives)

Hard Drive Manufacturers' Diagnostic Utilities Links:

TachTech
BleepingComputer

[lilkoolaidman]

I started the check in the morning at around 9:00AM, left, and then came back home at 4:00PM and it was still stuck at that 3%. Perhaps I didn't wait long enough?

[lilkoolaidman]

On start up it says to press F11 for recovery mode. What's that?

It's always said that so it's not like I have to do it.

[Elvandil]

It sounds like the hard drive cannot be repaired. The recovery mode will most likely erase your hard drive and restore the machine to the way it was when you bought it. But some machines have a partial recovery mode, so you need to check your manual.