Help - Windows XP home freezing on disc check

JSF

Silly me for the past week My laptop has been going slow and has frozen a couple of times and I sort of ignored it. have not really loaded any new software either.

Anyway it firoze again so I powered it off yesterday and when it restarted it strongly recommended a disc check. This is the strange bit, it tells me it has done 2% then 3 then 4% etc but will eventually hang or reboot itself. Tried to boot in safe mode, but it seems to go into a loop wanting this disc check, if I ignore the disc check I did get windows to load but loads of error messages only then to be told there were an error and it has to close itself.

It is 1 month out a 3 year warrranty. If it were the hard disc I would expect it to fail at the same point doing the disc check but its always at a different point, but it seems to run for ages, even left it overnight several hours. Spoke to Toshiba they are thinking of a restore from the orignal back up disc but I aint sure I want to lose all the data yet.

Any clues or suggestions appreciated. I suspect it is software I must admit.

I do keep Windows. Norton antivirus 2005, spybot and adware up to date and running. Norton seemed to warn me of 1-2 attempted hacks per day over the last 2 weeks , maybe someone got in?

Thanks in advance

JSF

Have managed to get it to load and run to try and delete anyting new however after 10-15 mins failed with a Kernal_inpage_data_error. I still suspect a virus, but trying to be open minded. Am tempted to turn off Windows XP system restore and let Norton do a full virus check or even delete things I dont really use that much, but am getting into areas I dont yet understand.

Sad part is I need my PC to reseach on this, if anyone got any ideas, will be grateful.

deary65

Run system file check: open cmn.type: sfc /scannow,note the space after sfc.IT might ask for your xp disk.

JSF

thanks Deary65, am having to post when I can find a spare computer, and I will try what you suggested if I can get it stable.
Windows was loading but seems to freeze after about 5-10 mins and reboot itself. However am getting truncated files now showing on the disc check so it clearly dont like something and it may be a hardware error after all. If it does load it tends to be if left off for an hour or two, but I can hear the disc clicking at times. Am thinkin to get yellow pages out for PC support.
Well I did want to upgrade so maybe looking for a desktop next an keep the laptop when I got it sorted . LOL