Hard disk failing?? HJT log attached

[glowingnissan07]

Sony Vaio
Pentium 4 CPU 2.8 Ghz
1 GB RAM
XP Home Edition (but Linux is also installed as well)

I've just recently recovered from a vicious invasion of malware, spyware, and viruses, thanks to Howard.

Some of the computer's behavior is acting very peculiar to me.

-windows takes forever to boot, logging on takes a long time (even though im not running a lot of processes).

-every single time i boot to Windows, windows keeps running disk check on one of my partitions (E

-Some times, the HDD led lights up for no reason and remains on, tho no applications are loading.

-recently, online servers keep crashing (halo 1 Custom)

-Whenever im playing on an online server or doing an AntiVirus Scan or on my hard disk, some wierd clicks and squeeks are heard from inside the computer. THis has only started RECENTLY.

-Last night when my PC crashed whiling playing Halo online, it rebooted to a dos application called Memtest, where it scans the memory. I let it run, hoping it would might find the problem to the crashing. I let it run for 12 hours straight before i skipped it. No errors were found from it.

I have a feeling my hard disk is failing. But i just wanted to make sure before i started backing up my files on dvds and stuff.

I have run defrag recently, and i made a couple changes to msconfig to help speed up the windows booting process, but i dont if that made things worse, since im not very good with computers.

I'm posting the screenshots with a HJT. send a reply as soon as you can.
fyi mscong services (without microsoft services) are on the left side of the picture, and the msconfig startup is on the right side.

 

[AlbertLionheart]

Your hijackthis log looks fine to me and I cannot see anything wrong with the contents of the image file you sent.
You should do your backups anyway but I agree from what you say that the hard drive is probably on the way out. Have you seen the report at the end oc the chkdsk test - it will tell you if there are bad sectors on the drive - if there are this is not a good sign.
If in doubt, replace the drive.

 

[glowingnissan07]

transfer files from a dead HDD

a couple questions...

ive been backing files last night, but i was just wondering...couldn't i just install my new 300 GB drive as master setting and switch my old one to slave and then copy the files once i get windows up and running on the new one?

Can I use the Sony Vaio Recovery Disk on my new drive if windows is still operational on the old one?

and lastly, i got a 300 GB Maxtor brand new with a 3 year warranty. just wondering if i made a good choice.

thanks guys