System restore points gone and massive space eaten up on my hard drive

I was having trouble changing my user account picture back to what it was, so I tried to do a system restore. When system restore opened, it told me I had only one restore point, from yesterday afternoon. ALL other restore points were gone. I ran it anyway, but when the computer came back on, nothing had changed, and a dialog box told me system restore had failed. It hadn't been able to extract a certain file, and the restore point had been damaged or deleted during the restore. On top of that, where, before I tried system restore, I had 256 GB free on my hard drive, after system restore, that's gone down to 232 GB! I'm panicking now. What should I do?

 

Replace your failing hard drive. That is most likely the cause of many of your PC problems.

 

Thanks. I was panicking because I thought it might have been a virus. I've also just discovered that thumbnails don't work anymore. All my image and video files just appear as program icons now. Could this also be because the hard drive is failing?

 

I suggest you first scan the hard disc. CrystalDiskInfo is a free program.

http://crystalmark.info/software/CrystalDiskInfo/index-e.html

 

Oh there's no need. I already know the hard drive is failing from another thread.

http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=293364

I just wondered if these latest problems were a result, or may be caused by a virus.