Io_err_bad_block

I'm running windows xp.
AMD Athlon 3200
Asus A7N8x-E Deluxe mobo
ATI Radeon x800 Pro 256 MB
Maxtor 7200 RPM Ultra ATA-133 Hard drive
1 Gig of RAM

I've been having massive problems with my computer freezing, restarting, or blue screens of death. At first this happened only when I played games, then it started happening at random times or just as windows was opening, and very frequently (99% of the time windows only runs in safe mode, and even then it still freezes). All the error messages pointed to a driver or memory problem (IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL, or PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA). However, I borrowed a friend's RAM and tried each slot, still getting the same problems and tried updating or rolling back drivers. I tried reinstalling windows, which would just lock up everytime.
When all seemd lost, I started to notice errors in the system log:


Product: Windows Operating System
ID: 7
Source: Disk
Version: 5.2
Symbolic Name: IO_ERR_BAD_BLOCK
Message: The device, %1, has a bad block.

Explanation
The device has a bad block of memory, which Windows attempted to read. The data might be missing or corrupted.

User Action
If this event is logged regularly, replace the hard disk drive.


There would be about 5 of these errors at at time, every time I turn the computer on and check. So I tried to run a hard drive check utitility, but for some reason or another I could not get them to run. Does replacing the hard drive seem like the correct course of action???

 

That would be a good starting point. If you have another hard drive you can try I would suggest that. How old is the hard drive you have in the system?

 

I've only had the computer since last June. Everything worked fine, and just out of thin air all the problems started happening......in October I want to say? I hadn't made any recent upgrades or anything like that. I did a system restore when it first started, as far back as a month, that also made no difference, so as far as I know software has nothing to do with it. (I've been extremely busy so have only been able to work on the computer here and there). The only thing is...what would cause a hard drive to suddenly start failing when it is only 5 monthsish old? And if my hard drive was deffective, would it still run partially? (like in safe mode, which is what I'm doing now).

 

if there's a bad block or sector ... so long as that sector or block is not accessed it will work ... but when it is accessed you get the error ... so it can work even when physically damaged ... that's one area where NTFS needs work is that it will still write/read to bad sectors/blocks .. unlike the linux file system where bad sectors are flagged and not used

on another note ... if you're still using FAT32 you want to reformat w/ NTFS as FAT32 is old and outdated