Couple weeks ago I did a defrag because there was data like clustered over the hard disk, no fragments, but just scattered about like mad, and to my dismay, every 12 hours it manages to get same point - it says drive need to be defragmented but when it runs it gets rid of fragments but scatters even more - also have been noticing randomly flashing leds for hard disk activity when doing nothing - since 5 virus scan progs didnt turn anythin up thought this norm for xp, and uninstalled all but AVG since I got pissed at mcafee for not updating over ten days - well, today i rebooted and now its making extreemly annoyin sounds almost sounds like as if a wire was hitting a fan but checked and all wires at least half-an-inch away from fans and fastend to case, but sound still there, and worse every time i reboot. also have noticed under system logs that it says followin: RSM cannot manage library PhysicalDrive1. The database is corrupt. For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp. " Does it sound like my hard disk is on the bink and if it is is there anythin i can do to fix it for free, or just buy another hard disk, cause im not gona buy another program for somthing that should be provided free as stated in warenties of hard disk manufacturers, and the last company i bought this thing called 'Disk Doctor' they never did deliver the $49 doller program.

Some more things lookin through logs that may contradict that thinking: The description for Event ID ( 1 ) in Source ( True Vector Engine ) cannot be found. The local computer may not have the necessary registry information or message DLL files to display messages from a remote computer. You may be able to use the /AUXSOURCE= flag to retrieve this description; see Help and Support for details. The following information is part of the event: . Volume Shadow Copy Service error: Unexpected error calling routine CoCreateInstance. hr = 0x80040206. For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp. Windows saved user NT AUTHORITY\LOCAL SERVICE registry while an application or service was still using the registry during log off. The memory used by the user's registry has not been freed. The registry will be unloaded when it is no longer in use. This is often caused by services running as a user account, try configuring the services to run in either the LocalService or NetworkService account. For more information, see Help and Support Center at The COM+ Event System detected a bad return code during its internal processing. HRESULT was 80070005 from line 44 of d:\nt\com\com1x\src\events\tier1\eventsystemobj.cpp. Please contact Microsoft Product Support Services to report this error. For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp. Faulting application iexplore.exe, version 6.0.2800.1106, faulting module mshtml.dll, version 6.0.2800.1126, fault address 0x000997b8. For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp. The timeout waiting for the performance data collection function "RemoteAccess" in the "C:\WINDOWS\System32\rasctrs.dll" Library to finish has expired. There may be a problem with this extensible counter or the service it is collecting data from or the system may have been very busy when this call was attempted. For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

The physical noises are an indicator that the drive is bad. If it were me, I'd reformat the entire hard drive and re-install Windows from scratch. If the problem kept occurring, I'd shop for a new drive. If it were me... but maybe someone else will have a better idea. Best Luck, Bob

Funny thing is the files that are real fragmented are the ones pertaining to backups and restores, and to security. Also says security log is full now.

Go to your drive mfrs webpage and download their Drive Fitness Test, SeaTools or whatever they call it. If your mfr is gay and doesn't have one then go to seagates site and get their SeaTools. It has a generic SMART test feature to test every mfrs drives.

Actually, after going into zone alarm and puting the 'local' network in to it 192.168.0.0 225.0.0.0 it works fine and actually faster than it has for long while so that prob is fixed now