Fantastic April Fools - My Computer's Getting Owned

Well I might as well start from the beginning of the problem... last night I go into Safe Mode and run a defrag on my primary Windows drive (without using chkdsk). This morning everything looks fine, so I reboot into normal Windows XP 64-bit Pro. It stayed on the Windows loading screen with the blue "progress" bar doing its dance for over 30 minutes. So I reboot and it does the same thing. Try to boot into safe mode and it begins to load windows but displays no icons, start menu, etc. (doesn't actually load anything). So I try to reboot again eventually and I see an error regarding DNSAPI.dll not found as I was trying to get into Windows, which consequently didn't allow me to get in. So I try to copy the file from CD using Windows Recovery Console to root\windows\system32 and it gives me the same error. I try to backup my files by copying them from Windows Recovery Console, and see that I don't have permissions. Then I decided to reinstall windows. During the reinstall, ONE file refused to install (the CD is fine) giving me the error "setup cannot copy the file: wbemcomm.dll". So I skipped it and continued anyway. During the 30 minute-ish main windows setup screens, I get about three errors saying it cannot install something regarding COM (probably had to do with that file I couldn't copy for some reason). But it continues regardless. After Windows is reinstalled, I begin backing up the things that matter to me on another hard drive to prepare to reformat the Windows hard drive. Note that some of my devices aren't working at all... such as my networking devices. So I try to install the drivers that came with the motherboard, reboot, and now it takes about 10 or 15 minutes to get into Windows. I rebooted again after the drivers were supposedly installed, and upon loading Windows I get the error, "following file is missing or corrupt: ntoskrnl.exe". Reboot, using the Windows CD again, delete the partition and reformat the drive (the long way). It finishes in less than a minute, which made little sense until I saw what followed: "Setup was unable to format. Disk may be damaged." (Granted during all of these errors that occurred I had to go upstairs and look on someone else's computer to search for viable answers...) So I open the box, check all connections, reconnect things, I wanted to check the RAM to see if a stick or two were bad... but I can't download memtest (if that's what people still use) w/o access to Internet... anyway, I also air dusted the case. Reboot again, try to reformat and now it's stuck at 0% (been about 3 hours now). Long story aside, I would like to know which pieces of hardware are most likely to be damaged. I'm hoping its the hard drive and I could just quickly acquire a replacement, but my luck has run thin this day. Oh, I also checked the BIOS... everything is still at default settings. Being that the many times I tried to go into Windows took on average 30 minutes until something actually happened, I have reason to believe it's the hard drive. Input would be kindly appreciated.

Windows XP 64-bit Professional
GPU: ZOTAC ZT-98XES2P-FCP GeForce 9800 GTX 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16
Motherboard: EVGA 132-CK-NF78-A1 LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 780i SLI ATX Intel
Memory: OCZ Reaper HPC Edition 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400)
PSU: CORSAIR CMPSU-750TX 750W ATX12V / EPS12V
Processor: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Kentsfield 2.4GHz 2 x 4MB L2 Cache LGA 775
Hard Drives: * Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3250410AS 250GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s
* Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 ST3250823AS 250GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache SATA 1.5Gb/s

 

Initially, while reading your book, I was thinking that your windows disc is having trouble reading because of possible scratches... but now I am thinking that you have a failing HDD. I think that your defrag might have thrown it over the edge. You need to run a chkdsk /r before anything else, assuming you have limited tools. If you don't have any boot discs like MiniPE, ERD and so on... you can use the repair console on your windows CD to run a "chkdsk /r" which is a check disc with repairs. If it turns up a ton of errors, and finds bad sectors, you likely have a failing drive that needs replacement.

 

Hahaha, thanks. Indeed that was one of my first tests, and it did turn up errors. I was able to understand this godforsaken Mac which I am using for Internet capabilities and burn a few bootable diagnostic tools to further recognize that this was a hard drive problem. For anyone else's reference, although most people wouldn't be crazy enough to read such a long winded post, I acquired the DOS boot Seagate utility SeaTools and memtest86 ISO's. I used the long error scan for bad sectors 4 times and each time it found/"repaired" different sectors. Upon further inquiry, although short in my time of inebriation, it seems that bad sectors are never truly repaired. In any case, I did a 0-fill erase of the hard drive and ran the long test again with only one result of a bad sector. I await the results of the next test. Many thanks to you, IanTheGeek, for giving regard to my post.

 

Wow,you are very good writer.Do you try write a book?
Anyway,can you try find another hdd,to see if it's ok?