Windows Pop-Up Says I Have A Hard Disk Problem

I am using Windows 7 Professional 32 bit. Three times today I have had the Windows pop up message display on my screen that I have attached. I have re-booted the machine and when the screen is black before Windows starts at the top of the screen it says:

"A problem with the hard drive has been detected. Consult the Troubleshooting section of your user's manual. Press the Enter key to continue." When I press the Enter key Windows finishes booting to the Desktop.

I ran chkdsk. When the machine rebooted after chkdsk completed the same message appeared. I press Enter and the machine finishes booting and when the Desktop appears the Windows pop up message displays again.

I have three Windows 7 Professional machines and I have never seen this pop up message appear before. The message looks very "Windows authentic". It is interesting that a very foreign speaking person called yesterday (woman) and again today (man) saying they were calling from Microsoft technical support to tell me I had downloaded an infection into my computer. I told them it was a scam call and I hung up. I don't know how they knew my landline number.

My next step is to run a spyware, malware and anti-virus scan although I did this last week and the machine was clean. I am using SpeedFan 4.5 to monitor my C drive and SpeedFan says the health Fitness and Peformance is good.

Has anyone seen this Windows pop up warning message before? I would appreciate your thoughts and comments.

Thanks, Bill

Brink, thanks very much for your help. I really appreciate it. I installed the SeaTools and am running all of the tests now. I will report back the test results tomorrow. The C drive is fully backed up. Thanks again. Bill

And if C: is your OS drive, be sure and include an image with your backup (to a different disk). Might save you a lot of time with your next install.

RogerR said:

And if C: is your OS drive, be sure and include an image with your backup (to a different disk). Might save you a lot of time with your next install.

I don't really understand what an Image is. If I have a total system backup of the machine please explain what an Image is, how I make an Image and why I need that in addition to the total system backup.

Thanks for your help!

Bill

I completed running the SeaTools on the drive and it passed all the tests except the S.M.A.R.T. test. To be safe, I will purchase a new drive to replace the old drive which is only 6 months old.

Thank you Brink -

Yes I did run all of the tests.

S.M.A.R.T. - Fail - ran twice
Short DST - Pass - ran twice
Short Generic - Pass - ran twice
Long Generic - Pass - ran once as it took several hours