Hard Drive Dying?

[Markoman01027]

I think my brother's COMPAQ Hard Drive is dying...

Whenever he goes on AIM, his PC locks up and you can hear like a weird grinding noise coming from the hard drive.

So I went into MSCONFIG and Disabled practically every program that was running at startup, and I went onto AIM, ran fine for a little bit, and then the noise came again.

This computer has been reformatted a few months ago, although the computer is about 2 years old.

I am trying to run a spyware and virus scan check on the PC, but whenever I run internet explorer, the samething happens..

Anybody got any ideas?

Whenever he runs internet explorer, he gets an error mesage saying "Internet Explorer has caused an error in WININET.DLL"

The error message is:
"Iexplore has caused an error in Wininet.dll iexplore will now close"

I am able to install any program or run Kazaa Lite, Winamp, but whenever I open up AIM or Internet explorer, the computer either locks up or gives me that error message.

I reinstalled AIM and still no help. Although not the latest version.
There is no Internet Explorer found in ADD/REMOVE PROGRAMS.

I tried to do a system restore on the system to a previous working date, but system restore said it failed to restore the system to that restore date..tried others..did the samething..any ideas?

Running a DEFRAG right now..hopefully this will all work..I think the hard drive is dying..as I hear the grinding noise from the HD whenever I get that lock up...

It's funny..he has AIM running in the background, but he is not signed on..once he signs in..the computer locks up and eventually I get an error message saying to close AIM or something like that..don't really remember the error message for that..

Ran a scan disk, and fixed all of the errors. .

UPDATE: My brother has NETSCAPE installed and he is able to run NETSCAPE and browse the web fine. So I downloaded the latest AIM, downloaded SPYBOT, and removed all spyware found, rebooted the PC, ran AIM, and I am still getting that lock up and grinding noise from the hard drive, while I wait, an error comes with saying that AIM got an error with WININET.DLL and it will close. Everything else runs fine except IE and AIM even if AIM is the latest version..

Something must be wrong with WININET.DLL...Any idea guys?



Thanks for all your help guys!
This is a COMPAQ and Windows ME

[Nuclear Krusader]

Open the PC, check the drive's mfg and download the proper diagnostic utility to see if there is a physical problem with the HD.

Don't do the low level format tho, unless you are sure the BIOS is a chip on the mobo and not data on a partition in that HD.

[Markoman01027]

Henry, the BIOS data is on the partition of that hard drive.

I think that WININET.DLL file is currupted, because it references for that file when I get that error message with IE and AIM. I am not sure how to replace that .DLL with a new one. I think I will need the same version of it.

[Markoman01027]

I found WININET.DLL on a website, but it was a different version of the WININET.DLL that was originally on the PC. So I ran MSCONFIG, and replaced the WININET.DLL with the WININET.DLL that I downloaded, rebooted the PC, and ran AIM, and it is still doing it.

I removed SPYWARE, I reinstalled AIM to the latest version, I practically removed every program from running at startup, and it is still giving me that error message.

Does an update of internet explorer include a WININET.DLL?

Any idea guys? thanks!

[Markoman01027]

An update..somehow my brother rebooted his PC and I guess it went into some type of troubleshooting mode, I went to check on the .DLL file and it was restored back to the original file version, and now he is able to run AIM fine..Not sure why it did that...