questions about a hard drive going bad.

I have a Compaq presario v6000 that's, as you can figure, getting old. Ill give you the run down and you can tell me what the best thing to do. Out of the box, I had overheating problems, I cut the vents out for better cooling. I had a particularly nasty virus that I struggled with for a long wile, and after many system restores and finally kicking the problem, I have a strong suspicion that the HD is crapping out. If I replace the hard drive, will my system run smoother?

 

get a smart report using this tool and post it
http://crystalmark.info/software/CrystalDiskInfo/index-e.html
running smoother certainly altho if there is nothing wrong with the drive I would do a full-format and reinstall

 

i did a full reformat and installed a diff os, i upgraded from vista home premium, to xp pro. =} the overheating seemed to go away when i did this? no change to performance tho, every now and again, ill get a blue screen that is all garbled. i can almost read what it said, something about a dick error. i did error checking on c and same results.

 

well that drive is most definitely worn out but a garbled blue screen could be something else ( bad ram failing Caps ) anytime a BSOD screen is corrupt that's never good

 

this has happened like 3 time that i can remember. i have 1.5gig ram. the 1 gig chip is only a few months old. perhaps it was a fluke. =}

 

if you can extract a zip file and burn a ISO
then use this and run it
http://www.memtest86.com/memtest86-3.5.iso.zip

 

sorry for the long silence. i went out and got a hd, not the one i wanted but it made a world of difference! thankyou for the support!
=P