Not really SL related

Okay, I have a question, it's not SL related but I really have no where else to turn. A couple days ago I noticed my system was running extremely slow. The last three things I downloaded before it started happening were Flash MX 2004 demo, a song from my friend, and Daemon tools. Now I'm not sure if either of those contained a virus but anyway here's what happened. After the system started running slow, I decided to restart, it fixed the problem for that moment. A couple hours later, when I got home, I went to go play SL, but when I went to my C drive (this drive containts my games, not my operating system) and I noticed it took a bit longer to load up for some reason. So I went to my music folder by accident, worked fine, then I go to my games folder and it says "Your C: drive is not formatted, format it now?". Obviously I said no. I could access a few games inside the C drive through shortcuts on my desktop, but others couldn't find the path, like the data in that specific folder had been corrupted. So 6 hours had passed while I was working on it and I let scandisk run, before windows started up. It scanned both my C and E drive (E being the one with my OS on it, 20 gig) and it came up clean for E, but it repaired the sector of my 120gig (C) where the games had been. For a day, this ran fine, I removed a lot of programs that I didnt use anymore and games etc. I tried to use defrag on it because I havn't in a while and it froze every time. So I tried virus scan. (When I did the scan the first time, it said there were no files in my Games folder on the C drive, but I could access some folders by typing in the directory). The virus scan froze also this time. So, I restart again, and its back to the state it was in before, really slow, taking about 5 minutes to load just the desktop (I only have MSN and my Sound blaster stuff that loads at the beginning). Then I try to access my computer, and it takes another 2-3 minutes to load. I click on my C drive, and I get the not formatted message again. Now, this is horrible for me because I have a LOT of work on there, personal and business things that I really can't afford to lose, Not to mention my games, music and programs. But I have been trying for two days now to try and get it to scan with scan disk hoping it would fix it like last time. I'm sure its a virus, but I have no means to remove it. The point I'm at now is that the disk is detected by the BIOS, it is there, but I tried to run FDISK with it, and it's not getting detected, when I checked my computer stats, it says the info on the drive is RAW. Now I'm hoping to God or some form of higher being that my stuff isn't deleted and can be repaird like last time, at least to the point where I can take it somewhere and have any viruses removed or the info trasnfered to another drive (this is under warrenty so I could get a new one). If anyone could provide ANY help it would be most appreciated. I really want to get back on SL and..I want my life back. For now I am restricted to forums and MSN... Thank you.

Hmm, it looks like you have either a dying harddrive, or something has corrupted special internal directory structure files (not sure what these are called).

Ive had many problems with my harddrives in the past, and the one thing that has fixed 90% of them is chkdsk. Im assuming your running Windows XP of course.

To run chkdsk, do this:

1. Click start.
   
2. Click run.
   
3. Type "cmd" without quotes.
   
4. In the command prompt window that opens up, type "CHKDSK C: /F /R" without quotes.
   [/list=1]
   
   Windows might ask you if you want to invalidate open handles to the drive for the check, say yes.
   
   Now, wait patiently for it to complete, do NOT do anything that will require drive access, including surfing the web.
   
   Post back what happens
   
   ==Chris

From personal experience, I second Christopher: a failing hard drive looks like all kinds of things that it isn't. The easiest way to check this is to run the low-level diagnostic program from your hard-drive manufacturer. I know Maxtor and Seagate have boot floppies that check the drive, thus no DOS/Windows or viruses can participate.

I found Phoenix NTFS to be a good tool for saving the contents of a mostly ok drive.

edited for spelling

He also lacks an Enter key.