Is my Hard Drive going bad?

Here's my problem:

After turning my power on, Windows XP will load, then it will get to the sign in screen. Sometimes I can sign in with my password and click to load my settings, but then it will lock up. Other times, I can start to enter my password and I may only get, for example, 3 of 5 letters entered and it will freeze.

I am using a wireless keyboard, but it has an additional plug to plug into the back of the computer box (which I did) but that did not work at all times either. Sometimes my mouse will freeze after I click to enter my password. Or if I don't do anything fast enough, my mouse freezes on the screen, so I can't click shut down my computer.

Is this all happening because my hard drive may be going bad? My nic card just went out, and when I went to hook up an addtional usb hub to the back of the box, my computer screen went crazy, then blue screen for a 1/2 sec then bam, nothing. That's when I shut everything off and let it sit for a day.
I turned everything back on and it worked okay.

After that I left it on for a day as I had alot of things to do on the computer, but then my wireless signal went out (that's what I was running on so I could get on the internet to pay bills). I closed out the internet and then went to finish the other things I had to do. I went to shut down the computer and it froze.

I turned it off using the power switch. I just HATE doing that but I didn't know what else to do.

I have everything backed up on an external drive, just in case it is my hard drive.

Thanks for any help you can offer.

 

I will try that but let me say this, I am really having a problem just getting to the desktop to do ANYTHING since I either freeze at the opening screen or if I do get to enter the password, the chances are that when it starts loading my settings that it will just hang.

Any way around this?

Thanks.

PS. Sheepishly,I should add that I am communicating through my hubbie's apple since my PC is not available/reliable.

 

Disconnect any added hardware. That should stop any unnecessary drivers being loaded and reduce the load on the power supply (check that the fan of the power supply is spinning freely, a good flow of air should be coming out).

You could boot into Safe Mode. Tap the F8 key rapidly just before you would normally see the first Windows screen.

See if it seems quite stable in Safe Mode. Run Error Checking/chkdsk on the harddrives (see Help and Support).

You could install and run Everest in Safe Mode, although it is too large to transfer by floppy.

Matt

 

My first move would be a de-dust and a re-seat of cards.

Vacuum out the inside, paying particular attention to the processor’s heat sink. Use a small artist’s paint brush if necessary to clean out any clogs between the fins.

Then remove at least the graphics and memory cards and refit them securely.

 

I can download everything to a cd from my laptop.

Thanks

I do have Everest loaded and I think I have an older copy of the stats to compare with if needed.