Ok here goes

I had XP PRO setup on my primary maxtor 40gig HD and somehow managed to get the msblast worm on it. not being able to keep an internet connection i formated my disk and reinstalled of course this did not fix the blaster worm. but i got 98 installed on my other hard drive and got the patch etc for xp and set it up just to make sure it was gone after it was all fixed i reformated and while trying to get to the boot sequence for xp i got this error at the BIOS screen

S.M.A.R.T failure predicted on primaty maxtor .......... backup all files

So i decided to try fdisk and deleting the partion on the disk and making a new one but this failed! after about 10 trys i eventualy got the partion table on and a working copy of xp on it..

Now im still left with a few problems
1. at the BIOS screen i still get the S.M.A.R.T warning
2. the hard disk seems to have a few bad sectors ( can this be fixed )
3. read problems after installing files

So can anyone suggest a fix apart from binning it as im a poor student and need the space on that hard drive cos we all know 10gig aint enuff :rolleyes:

See the second "Read:" post in this forum.
Download the PowerMax program from Maxtor and run that test.

Switch off the SMART-warnings until you have run that test.

You could also usePartition Magic and repartition/reformat that HD
with PM rather than FDISK. Dont use the Win98 FDISK for XP.