it happened again....here's the detailed story: i am surfing the net and suddenly i heard a sound and it's like 'tac' and stops and 'tac' again and the screen froze..... so the buttons won't work and i had to press the restart button, the comp restarts but data on screen slowly appears as compared to when one normally starts the computer. and then i get this msg: 'disk boot failure, insert system disk and press enter' so i did, and it all ends up with the A:/ that didn't help much. i did many times and tried to enter into safe mode but the same msg reappeared. the computer only starts up normally when, i turn it off and leave it aside for awhile....and then things go back to normal....is there something wrong? or was i hit by multiple viruses? or low on battery? i don't know much, pls help me thank you

Your HDD is going south. And Fast. Back up your data NOW. Go buy you a new HDD tomorrow and Norton Ghost. Partition and format the new drive using fdisk commands. Put your new HDD in and set the jumper on the back to slave. Install the Norton Ghost softwatre onto your current HDD. Insert your start up floppy into your floppy drive and look through you newly installed Norton Ghost program and copy the Ghost.exe file to your startup disk. Then reboot your computer leaving the start up disk in the floppy drive and once you arrive at the A:> prompt type: "ghost.exe" or just "ghost", without the quotations. It will lauch a screen. You will have to use your arrow keys on your keyboard to navigate because the mouse doesn't work in DOS. Choose ghosting the primary drive C: to slave drive D: then sit back and let it do it's thing. Once completed. Shut down computer. Unplug your original HDD and remove it, set the new one to Master with the jumper on the back and plug it in where the old HDD was. Then turn your computer on.

Any unusual sound like a click, clack, tick, etc, froma hard drive indicates that it is dying.

what's HDD? as i've said, i don't know much.....and, is there a way that can help? buying HDD n Norton Ghost, will that cost me much? how about reformatting again? i get this " unable to write to disk in C: as data/files may be lost" thanks,

A "HDD" is short for hard drive. A new HDD, if you buy it online, will cost you about $50.00-$60.00 and norton ghost.exe can probably downloaded of the net for free, just search some of the file sharing P2P networks. Or you can buy it at the store for about $30.00. The clicking sound idicates a mechanical failure with the HDD. Reformating will not fix the problem. The only fix is to replace it. If you don't have any important data on the HDD, and you have all of your Hardware drivers backed up to a CD, then Norton Ghost is not needed. It just makes the whole process alot easier. But if you fiddle around and not replace the drive immediately, then you'll be doing it the harder way anyway. And there again Norton Ghost won't be able to help you. Ghost only works if bother drives are still functional. Hope this helps. Good Luck.