Can an HDD cause response time hiccups?

[Mark Christian]

I have been having some big problems with a PC I built back in 2008. It started by occasionally freezing up on me for 15-30 seconds. The mouse pointer won't move, the keyboard doesn't respond, but after a few seconds, things are back to normal.

Then it started freezing during bootup. I would have to power it down and power back up to get it to boot up, sometimes more than once.

Another weird wrinkle is that Windows Update says my video driver needs to be updated, but when I try to install it, it fails (more than once).

I have also gotten the Blue Screen of Death on one occasion, which makes me think my HDD is dying a slowly. But before I purchase a new one, I wanna be sure the freeze-ups don't point to something else - memory, CPU, graphics card?

Any guidance would be greatly appreciated.

 

[phil22]

You can test the hard drive and RAM modules with diagnostic software which loads from a boot CD.

Drive manufacturer's have diagnostic software which you can download via the links here: http://www.tacktech.com/display.cfm?ttid=287

You can test the RAM modules with Memtest86+ from here: http://www.memtest.org/

To create the boot discs from the ISO files, you can use IMGBurn: http://www.filehippo.com/download_imgburn/