Computer Crashing - Motherboard or HD?

[UDRays]

I have an HP 735n (athlon xp 2600 512MB 80GB) which is about a year old and it has been giving me various problems for about the last month. I cannot use the System Restore that comes on the HD because it won't work. I do have the CD's and have been able to restore the computer with them. Computer works fine for a short periord after restoring and then starts giving various errors such as.

Boot Record not found.
Or it will load into safe mode when I start it.
Then when entering safe mode it can take 30 mins. to load.

I downloaded TuffTest and ran that, for the hard drive it had thousands of F004 errors which I think means sectors not found.

Then I ran Sandra and the mainboard temp. reading was 66 degrees C.

Sometimes the computer will work fine for a few days then it will just do random slow things, like the screensaver will slow down, or pictures will take forever to load, then when I restart it, it goes into safe mode.

I'm trying to determine, with this computer only being worth $400 or so, if I can fix my problems by purchasing a new 250GB hard drive which I wanted anyway, or if this has other problems, and I should go with a new system. I also own windows 98se and windows xp upgrade if it would be better to somehow format the drive and just load these? Thanks for your help and suggestions.

 

[Triple6]

Form what you've said it does sound like the hard drive. To be sure find out who manufacturered it and run their tests on it. For example if its a Maxtor drive then download Powermax and run all their tests - if it fails then check for warranty and replace it.

As with most HP's the cooling isn't the greatest. If possible add some Case exhaust fans to remove some of the heat as well as tidy up the cables and blow out and dust. You can also run teh computer with teh side off to see what difference that has on the temps.

One lats thing to make sure is that you are not getting Viruses on your system that are causing these problems.