Computer crashed. When I got it back up I got this message "At least one area of drive C has sustained physical damage. Although such damage might be caused by as isolated incient such as a power failure, it is often a sign of impending hardware failure. Back up your files ASAP.You should run ScanDisk daily for a while; if more physical errors occur, have this drive checked by a qualified computer hardware tech. ScanDisk found and fixed the following problem on drive C: 1 bad cluster was patched. Surface scan-Data could not be read from cluster 39,403 the \USER.DAT file is currently using cluster 39,403. ScanDisk patched the cluster successfully." Can anyone explain this to me???

The part of your hard drive that user.dat was written to was bad. Scandisk moved the file and marked the spot bad. If your computer is working OK now don't worry about it. If it's not, exit to dos and at the prompt type: scanreg/restore and return. Restore a registry with a date that precedes the problem. User.dat has part of the registry in it. It makes sense that if the spot it occupied was bad, then even if the OS moved the file it couldn't get all the data in it. Scanreg/restore will restore an older version of the registry that hopefully didn't occupy that same spot.

http://www.pcworld.com.sg/ez3.htm?short_id=31 description of that error.

I'v just read a book on hard drives, so I'll try to explain why the hard drive will continue to get worse. When a hard drive crashes, the reader heads literally "crash" onto the drive surface. This creates bad sectors. Additionally, the crash likely knocked particles from the drive surface loose. When the heads bump into the loose particles the head bounces, creating another "crash." Like the error says, back up your data ASAP, and watch for any sign that the problem is worsening. If you continue to have problems you will need a new hard drive. -Bob

Find out what brand of HD you have then try to download a Diagnostics program for it to do a LOW-LEVEL format on the hd, after backing up your data of course, then a low-level format can in some ??% restore some or all bad sectors. it's worth a try. Especially at the chance to save your drive - Note: you may need to do this more than once before it actually restores any sectors. Nathan(Me) -- "Windows are easily broken." :)

A thing that also might have happened: your hard disk has become too hot. (A program called Sisoft Sandra revealed this, causing me to install a fan to cool my hard disk.) Some computers have poor cooling fans. Nathan: Windows are useful, they allow you to see what happens outside.