Duron 700, Fujitsu 20gb HDD, 128MB Ram, Windows Me.
At power on, initial BIOS screens appear okay, until reaches point of "Verify pool data". System freeze with "Disk I/O error - press any key etc" appearing. HDD makes a consistent"ticking" noise, which it hasn't done previously, and when system freezes, HDD makes sporadic sounds every 10 minutes or so.
Have tried to start in safe mode, but keyboard dead, and defaults to "Help" option of the four presented. At this point, all I then have is page 1 of the Me Help screens appear, and I can't move further.
At the same time, my Belkin 4 port USB hub and scanner also indicate no power, though they do activate initially when I start up the system.
I run AVG V6.0, and whilst I did get an email from an unrecognised source, as well as one from Symantec, I can find no reference to any recent virus which may have caused this problem. Additionally no attachments opened and email viewed briefly in preview pane only in Outlook Express 6. I have spoken to a couple of people in my address book, and they have received no rogue emails via me.
Is this a HDD terminal problem and if so what are my chances of, and how would I be able to go about, recovering any data of the disk? Or am I the victim of a new virus?
At power on, initial BIOS screens appear okay, until reaches point of "Verify pool data". System freeze with "Disk I/O error - press any key etc" appearing. HDD makes a consistent"ticking" noise, which it hasn't done previously, and when system freezes, HDD makes sporadic sounds every 10 minutes or so.
Have tried to start in safe mode, but keyboard dead, and defaults to "Help" option of the four presented. At this point, all I then have is page 1 of the Me Help screens appear, and I can't move further.
At the same time, my Belkin 4 port USB hub and scanner also indicate no power, though they do activate initially when I start up the system.
I run AVG V6.0, and whilst I did get an email from an unrecognised source, as well as one from Symantec, I can find no reference to any recent virus which may have caused this problem. Additionally no attachments opened and email viewed briefly in preview pane only in Outlook Express 6. I have spoken to a couple of people in my address book, and they have received no rogue emails via me.
Is this a HDD terminal problem and if so what are my chances of, and how would I be able to go about, recovering any data of the disk? Or am I the victim of a new virus?