Slow Laptop - Must be Hardware, not infected

Hmm… if the drive was faulty, chkdsk would certainly have picked up on it. There are a couple of other things you could do:

1. Try doing a Repair Install from the XP disk.
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/h…ips/doug92.mspx

2. If that doesn't work try doing a Clean install.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/978307
(Follow Method 1)

This might just save you from having to buy a new hard disk. If the order has already gone through, you should be able to return it if the steps above work.

You might be able to access some files on the hard drive. If you know how to use Command Prompt, or DOS, you should be okay. The following Microsoft article should come in handy :

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314058

I strongly suggest trying to do the above steps before replacing the hard drive.

Am getting an acpi.sys and cpqarray.sys is corrupted Haven't tried the full restore yet.

will a clean install delete all my documents?

Yes, a clean install will require you to format your hard drive. This will delete everything on the drive. Try a clean install and see if it works. A faulty hard drive can cause file errors, but so can malware and virus'. I suggest that after you re-install windows, use it for a couple of days first to see whether it crashes. I can even talk you through some more extensive hardware tests, such as using Prime95. Copying your files across straight away might result in a new infection, which wouldn't really solve anything.

I am so nervous about doing this without being able to effectively and easily copy all "my documents" to an external harddrive. I notice that there are some utilities in the Puppy Menu, like: Pbackup, pmirror, pudd copy drive, …etc. Could I use any of these to facilitate a complete transfer of all my documents before I erase everything that's on my old drive?

Hi, Forgive me for butting in here, but if you are booting into Puppy then its easy to copy stuff from your Windows My Documents folder to your external hard drive…
You should plug in your external hard drive before booting into Puppy..then Puppy will be able to find it and put an Icon on your desktop for it.
All you need do is open a Puppy window on your Hard drive and then open another Puppy window on your Ext USB drive and then just "drag and drop" the files across.
If you are having any difficulty with this post back with the exact problem you are experiencing and we can take it from there.
Regards
paws

Thanks for the advice. The problem was that in copying the files over, Puppy appears to stall…but it's actually copying a rather large file. I'll do the XP reinstall shortly.

Am struggling with either the recovery install or the clean install. with Windows CD in the drive, I can't get past the "recent hardware or software change might cause this….it asks me to select, Safe, safe with Networking, etc. it wants me to reinstall the hall.dll file. How would I do that?

Do you mean the "hal.dll" ? With the CD in the drive, the computer should say something like "Press any key to boot from CD" when it starts up. You will need to do this to enter the XP installation disc. It should not ask you to start the machine in safe mode at all. If you can get the machine to boot from the XP installation disc, do a "repair install". This will replace any damaged files, such as the hal.dll file. The hal.dll file can be related to hard-drive malfunctions, but it could also indicate a deleted/broken boot.ini file. Again, a repair install should fix this. There are usually only two ways that the boot.ini file can malfunction. The first is that the hard-drive itself is malfunctioning, the second is that your machine was infected by a virus. With that in mind, I suggest you just try a "clean install" if the "repair install" does not work.

Oooh…I'm so excited, I am able to get the Recovery / Repair in the cd boot disk to work. …but it's seems stuck in DOs with the C:\> prompt. Am i supposed to type something?

When doing a repair install, don't go into the Recovery Console. Please follow these instructions :

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/h…ips/doug92.mspx

OK I followed those instructions for recovery…and the Hard Drive Recovered. But it's still running slow!

Additionally, there were some problems while the Windows XP file was being reloaded. A number of .dll files could not be copied. Is there some way to clean that up and load the right drivers without reloading XP? It also seems that the sound driver needs to be updated again, because I have that scratchy sound. I'll fix that.

Could you tell me exactly which .dll files weren't loaded?

Ahhh…I was afraid you'd ask me that…. Some I copied. Others…I was too lazy because the file names were too long. Here's what I have, but there were more: wmsdmoe2.dll wmspdmod.dll kbdn106.dll l_trk.nls tp4cfg50.dll wordpad.exe.manifest x86_microsoft.tools….. wmvcore.dll In most cases, the setup instruction indicated that skipping the file would not effect the install. In other cases, Setup indicated that there might be effects. Might there be some report in Setup about the installation that would detail all this? Alternatively, can I manually copy all of them from the disk?