Windows 7: Possible Hard Drive Failure?

Hello to All,
You may remember a problem I had assisting my cousin get his laptop running. He actually went and got a WD backup drive. He has been running good. Has a tendency to overdue the AV scans, Malware Scans and CCleaner Scans. Anyway, he booted yesterday and a timed to start on "Boot Normally" with safe mode and safe mode with network etc: screen came up. He advised he got logged on and ran everything for anything with no luck. Every time he reboots ( 2-3 times ) it came up as described. I had him do a chkdsk. When it finished it booted normally and has several times since. Since this is the condition the computer was in prior to me helping him a month ago, I thought as a minor leaguer, that I'd inquire with the forum members. Is it possible his toshiba laptop which originally ran Vista, he got it dumped for Windows 7 Home Premium, has the 160 GB Hard drive beginning to croak. Or am I missing something. Thanks for any assistance.
glennc

A good place to start. Update and run the active AV.
When done download, update and run full scan with Malwarebytes.
Might as well leave Mbam on his lappy as it would appear they will need it often.
It is an on demand scanner so won't interfere with the active AV.

Run Windows Disk Cleanup as Administrator first and get rid of all the internet Temp files etc.
That helps a lot. There is always unwanted junk in there if it builds up over weeks.
Mike

Hello Hopalong X.
He is running Commodo Firewall, AVG free resident, MSE as standalone, with Malwarebytes and SuperantiSpyware as well. Oh and CCleaner. He updates manually everything, and then runs them. Thanks for the reply.
glennc