I might be able to do that... I'd hate to disassemble my 500GB external (that's a 3.5" not even sure it would work temporarily to test this 2.5"). I'll consider it. Don't want to risk screwing that one up.


Anyway, I ran ALL of the tests in a program called HD Tune 5.0 (free trial) and it reports that the HDD is fine, like everything else (WD's Lifeguard, ChkDsk). Now I am truly confused. The system clearly suffered a critical event with this (what I believe is the POST screen - Broadcom thing) it's encountered twice in the span of two months and then several successive times on the second event with the crash out of the OS on idle, claiming "Operating System Not Found". I don't understand this. COULD it be the MB after all? Do laptop MB's just up and crap out like that, but then decide to start working again? Or could it possibly have had anything to do with the Trojan Backdoor.Bot this system had on in for about a week before this second event? This is turning out to be a VERY difficult thing to DX. Beyond my scope (how I wish right now I could spend the $$$ to take it to a prof).


If you or someone else could tell me what these Event ID 51, Disk and Event ID 57, NTFS errors indicates with all of the rest of these symptoms I'd really appreciate it, I think they might hold the key to this mystery. I know both could mean dozens of different things, but for me I still think it's the HDD (though I am still not 100% on that).

And I also was curious to know if it's normal for the HDD to be making those little snap-ticks instead of just the little whirring noises, even with the OS in idle. I think that will tell me for certain if it's the problem here. If they weren't there before, they certainly were never this audible. My 8-year old XP doesn't even make those noises (at any pitch) so that's why I'm asking.


Thanks again!

EDIT: just finished a little RAM tester (MemTest) to cover the bases for the past 25 minutes... 0 errors there (thought maybe that could be it as I'd opened that cover to get a bit of dust out a few months back).