VERYslow boot and other issues....could it be a damaged hard drive?

I'm trying to help my hubby (who knows very little) fix his OLD laptop (256 RAM). He only uses it to do internet and Word with the very occasional power point, and it has always worked fine for those few things.

However, it got VERY slow (an hour to hour and a half just to boot), so I had him take it to the repair shop. They wiped it, sent it back, and it worked for only about 6 months. Here it goes again!

I timed the boot and it was 1 hour 15 mins today. Connecting to internet via dialup (which on my system takes like 2 minutes on a slow day) took another hour and 10 minutes.

He has FEW things on this drive. Less than 1 G of things there. He has zero games, zero videos...in other words, no RAM hogs other than XP itself.

Is this hard drive bad or something else I've overlooked? (all the usual malware/spyware, viruses, etc have been scanned for and nothing comes up).

Thoughts appreciated.

Mollie

 

there are a couple of things you can look at. since windows is acting up. I would get UBCD.
http://majorgeeks.com/Ultimate_Boot_CD_d4981.html
It is a bootable cd and has alot of tools on it, and they run from dos. here's a list: http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/ (scroll a bit down the page)


Under memory tests, i would run memtest86 to check the RAM
also, check the hard drive with whichever program matches your manufacturer.

also, you could also be having a heat issue, maybe a fan stopped working, or isn't seated properly anymore. There could be dust, dirt, etc.