hard drive failure?

hey guys hows it going. im new here and experencing a problem. about a month ago i finished my new custom built machine. i use it to do some online gaming and things of that nature. about a week ago i noticed it was running a little slow. ignored it. the next day it was running really slow. ran some antivirus. found a trojan horse and some malware. so i deleted it. but the problem was still occuring. no programs would load up and the ones that did would not respond. so i deleted the whole partition and started again.windows took forever to install and when it did the problem is still there. i than tried opening up the case making sure all the connections were good, re-seated the ram, video card, the main power pins on the psu. tried swapping sata ports. but the problem is still there. im thinking the hard drive might not be reading right and thats why everything is taking forever to load and respond properly. heres the spec of the build list.
amd fx6300 six core processor
g skil 8gb ram
corsair cx430psu
xfx hd7700 graphics card
GIGABYTE GA-970A-UD3 AM3+ AMD 970 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard
Western Digital WD Blue WD5000AAKX 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive Bare Drive - OEM
what do you guys think

 

Hi welcome to the forum Run WD lifeguard to test the health of the drive-

http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=810&sid=3&lang=en

Run memtest for a dozen passes to check your memory also-

http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/memtest86.html

Test your cpu with Intel burn,'you can use it on amd' This will stress the cpu so monitor temperatures with speedfan or temp monitoring software of your choice, set to maximum stress and maximum memory, if it completes it' stable but you may wish to runit a few more times.

http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/intelburntest.html

http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/speedfan.html

 

i dont think its the cpu. there is no load on the cpu. the ram is only running at about 20% all six cores are idling about 52 degrees farenheit.

 

If you formatted using just Windows before the reinstall, it most likely did not wipe the MBR (master boot record). You may have a boot kit, or rootkit.

Download this rescue disk, and burn it to a CD using freeware such as ImgBurn:

http://support.kaspersky.com/us/4162


Boot the CD and stay connected to the net, update the database, then scan your computer. I've had much success with this tool.

:major

 

If the hard drive passes the WD tests and is healthy, those would be the tests I'd run next so I posted them while I was at the keyboard. With a hardware performance problem it's best to rule out the 3 major performance components so energy can be concentrated in other areas, at least in my opinion.

Let see if the drive is healthy first though, if your computer is too slow to run software tools connect the drive as a secondary to a different computer if possible then run Data lifeguard diagnostics.

 

Rikky:

Not saying it's the solution, but had to use the Kaspersky disk twice in the last week to knock out bootkits, and Trojans outside of Windows. The symptoms sound a lot like it's the case, as the malware hangs out in the boot sector. If I recall correctly, Windows doesn't wipe the boot sector during a format like DBAN.

 

I think you've posted good advice too:cool Checking for a bootkit should probably be run before the drive is moved to another machine for health checks, so I agree with you.

If the drive is staying in the same machine they can be checked in any order.

 

ok guys heres a little update. i ran the disk utility from western digital. everything passed the test. i ran the full scan. things got a little better for the most part like running basic things such as internet browsers and small things. feeling confident i re downloaded my games and there still slow and glitchy. and freezes often. my ping is low and i have good fps. there is low activity on my cpu and gpu. ram only runs at only 25%. i have the latest drivers for my cpu gpu and bios. which brings me back to the hard drive.